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1 





S' IDUNA 

AND 

OTHER STORIES 

BY 

•GEORGE • A • HIBBARD- 




No. 706. Extra. , August, 1891. 

Price, 50 cents. 

Entered at the Post-Ofifice at New York, as Second-class Mail Matter, Issued Monthly. 
Subscription Price, per year, 12 Nos., $5 00. 


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IDUNA 


AND OTHER STORIES 



GEORGE A. HIBBARD 





'6 




Copyright, 1891, by Harper & Brothers. 


All rights reserved. 


CONTENTS. 


/iDUNA 

/the woman in the case. . 

/ PAPOOSE , . . 

/“WOULD DICK DO THAT 

/“THE DRAGONESS” 

/ IN MAIDEN MEDITATION, 


PAGE 

I 

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lOI 

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IDUNA 






IDUNA 


I HAD just passed through that first really 
passionate part of a man’s life which gen- 
erally comes somewhere in his third decade, 
and had entered upon the brief period which 
invariably follows, when, in our comparative 
inexperience, we think that we have so felt 
all that the world gives of enjoyment or sor- 
row that, if not incapable of new or strong 
emotion, we are at least quite beyond the 
possibility of surprise. I was more than 
startled, however, when, in the first compla- 
cency of this latter time, I received a request 
which I could not, and which indeed I had 
no desire to disregard. In his will my father 
had enjoined upon me that whenever and 
whithersoever a lifelong friend should sum- 
mon me, I should immediately and literally 
obey the call. I was then to learn some- 
thing of great importance to myself. As 
may well be imagined, I had at one time and 


4 


IDUN4 


another thought much of the probable nat- 
ure of the communication thus to be made ; 
but as the years passed and the summons 
did not come, I hacj gradually ceased to 
think of the matter. But now I had received 
it, and without an hour’s delay I started in 
obedience to it. 

Mr. Dacre — I will so call him, for if it so 
happens that you have never heard of him it 
will be as well as if I used his real name, and 
if, as is more than probable, you have known 
him by reputation, I can thus present him to 
you without encountering the impediment 
of a preconception or any possible prejudice 
arising from association — Mr. Dacre, my fa- 
ther’s friend, was hardly known to me. I 
did not remember that I had seen him even 
when a child, and I had only heard of him in 
later years, in the vague, fitful way in which 
travellers hear so much from home. I knew 
that he had once been very prominent polit- 
ically, and that he had held high office. I 
had always understood that he was a man 
of great wealth, and lately I had heard him 
described as a man of strange chara.cter — a 
misanthrope, a pagan. At the most success- 
ful moment of his career he had been stricken 


IDUNA 


5 


down by the death of his young wife. He 
had never fully recovered from the blow. 
Renouncing power and ambition, he had 
withdrawn wholly from the world, of which 
he had been so important a part, and had 
retired to a great estate in a secluded and 
beautiful part of a country distant from the 
scene of his former life. There he lived in 
splendid solitude. 

* * * 

It was near sunset when I arrived, after a 
long journey, at rhy destination. Looking 
about me in some perplexity as to what was 
to become of me, I saw a servant in quiet 
livery, who immediately approached me and 
informed me that the carriage was waiting. I 
entered it at once and was driven rapidly away. 
I had not gone far when I felt a cool breeze, 
and soon I caught glimpses of the sea, which 
in the low light of the hour seemed, in the 
distance, but a dull, slaty expanse. It was a 
beautiful evening, and as the carriage rolled 
along the smooth, hard road I fell into a rev- 
ery, in which memories and expectations 
strangely mingled. I felt that my life had 
indeed held its way only over the barrens of 
existence, when such a scene of peaceful 


6 


IDUNA 


beauty brought to me no blossom or blade 
of tender memory ; I wondered if aught 
awaited me in these new surroundings that 
could give me the full, healthy interest I so 
lately had known. I wondered in a vague, 
listless fashion if it might be so. That was 
all. I could not believe such a thing proba- 
ble or possible. 

The lights shone in the windows of a cot- 
tage by the roadside as I passed, and when I 
reached the stately pile which was Mr. Dacre’s 
home, it was too dark to distinguish anything 
in detail. I could only see the heavy mass of 
a huge building against a dusky sky. Evi- 
dently I was not taken to the great entrance, 
but to a private doorway. A curiously shaped 
sconce, which seemed almost heavy with a 
crushed-down throng of lights striving towards 
uprising, gave forth a subdued glow in the hall 
through which I was conducted by a servant 
who, it was plain, had awaited my arrival ; but 
even by this slight illumination I saw some- 
thing of the internal splendor of the house. 
The man led me up a flight of stairs, and, 
after conducting me through a long corridor, 
ushered me into a suite of spacious rooms 
looking on the sea. He informed me that 


IDUNA 


7 


dinner would be served in an hour, but that 
Mr. Dacre desired to see me in the library as 
soon as I should be ready. 

I dressed hastily, for I was very eager to 
meet my host — very anxious to learn as soon 
as possible what I could not doubt was very 
important to myself. 

I passed down the main stairway into the 
central hall, and was shown the way to the 
library. The serried volumes, almost mur- 
murous with accumulated meaning, thronged 
along the high walls. As I entered, the only 
occupant of the immense room came forward 
to meet me. I knew at once that this was 
Mr. Dacre. I had seen many a man who 
might well awaken reverence or awe, many 
who held by inheritance or who had won 
proud position or wide authority, many sur- 
rounded by the aureola of rank or crowned 
by the nimbus of fame, but I had never seen 
any more striking personage than my father s 
friend. I had never seen any man of such 
personal significance, of such grand physical 
aspect, of such apparent power and knowl- 
edge blended in such harmonious air, and all 
borne with the habitual grace of one long ac- 
customed to life’s best associations. 


8 


IDUNA 


“ You are my friend’s son,” he said in 
strong, resonant voice, adding, as he grasped 
my hand with the assuring warmth of wel- 
come, “You have lost no time in coming. I 
like that.” 

I told him I could but obey my father’s 
command so solemnly expressed. 

“ Many might have found cause for de- 
lay,” he said, half to himself. 

The announcement of dinner interrupted 
our conversation, but Mr. Dacre lingered as 
if expecting some one. ^ 

“ My daughter Alda is late,” he said. “ She 
is with her sister.” 

I heard this announcement with great sur- 
prise, for I did not know that Mr. Dacre had 
any children. In a moment the door was 
opened, and a young girl entered. Light and 
frail was the form that met my sight — so 
slight, so fine, that it seemed, in her, human 
clay had found a hitherto unknown purity. 
As light through delicate porcelain, so some 
unearthly radiance shone through the diaph- 
anous face. She moved as if imponderable, 
and as she came towards us I saw in her 
cheek the fair, false glow that tells so surely 
of approaching death. 


IDUNA 


9 


At dinner we talked only of indifferent 
things. I never would have imagined that 
Mr. Dacre’s life was one of isolation and mo- 
notony. He might still have been the active 
director of great affairs. Every subject upon 
which we touched, even such as had only re- 
cently caught the attention of the world, 
seemed entirely familiar to him. 

Alda spoke little, but in all she said she 
showed wide knowledge and infinite refine- 
ment. After she had mentioned her sister, 
whose name I now first heard was Iduna, I 
became more than curious to know why she 
too did not dine with us, but was held from 
inquiry by some inexplicable feeling. There 
was no need, however, for inquiry, as Alda 
almost immediately said : 

“ My sister is very young, and has seen 
hardly any one. She has lived so quiet a 
life that any change might excite her too 
much.’’ 

Instead of producing the calming effect of 
an explanation, what she said only excited 
my interest the more. I was not satisfied. I 
could not understand why I felt as I did, but 
I was sure something was held from me, that 
some mystery was here. 


lO 


IDUNA 


Dinner came to an end, and Alda rose and 
left me alone with Mr. Dacre. 

Though my life had been such as to give 
me a certain amount of self-confidence, and 
though contact with the world had long ago 
brushed away the delicate bloom of youthful 
shyness, I felt an unaccountable restraint in 
his presence. 

‘‘ It was hardly light enough when I came,’' 
I said, at last freeing myself from the mo- 
mentary constraint, “ to see the beauty of 
your place.” 

“You will like it,” he said, and^’he spoke 
with an overmastering sadness that now, since 
I had seen Alda, I thought I could under- 
stand, but which I was yet to learn I had lit- 
tle fathomed. “ It is a fine place, and I would 
be glad if people of my race had always lived 
in it. If it takes three generations to make 
a gentleman, it takes certainly as many to 
make a home.” 

“ It has not always been yours?” 

“ No. It came to me as you see it, rich in 
so much that arises from the picturesquely 
blent life of other days.” 

“The present,” I said, hardly understand- 
ing exactly what I meant, “ often has unworn 


IDUNA. 


II 


attractions for me, sometimes more subtle and 
even more striking than those of the past.” 

“ It is true,” he answered quickly. ‘ Our 
time has its own charm. The humblest life 
has a meaning that formerly could hardly 
have belonged to the highest. When our 
knowledge is so great, when our interests 
are so complex, when our relations are so 
broad, when all the world is our home and 
every man our neighbor, who would wish for 
the narrow circumstances of an earlier age?” 

He had forgotten himself, and the sentences 
came with a vigor I had not expected. 

He continued for some time to talk with 
the same animation and directness. I hoped 
that he might make some allusion to the 
cause of my summons, but he did not. Before 
I was aware of it I found that, without ques- 
tioning me, he had led me to speak of my 
life, to disclose almost my inner self. Startled 
into sudden consciousness, I felt very much 
as might an intelligent animalcule aware that 
he was in the focus of a solar microscope. I 
knew that my moral and mental fabric was as 
evident to him as might be the structure of 
the creature beneath the lenses, and I felt 
myself powerless to escape. Why he wished 


12 


IDUNA 


SO closely to learn the strength, the weakness, 
the very texture of my character — all, in 
short, that I was — I did not discover. 

“You have,’’ he said finally, “led the life 
of many rich and fairly educated young men 
of the day — not doing anything particularly 
foolish or singularly wise. However, it is 
more important not to do foolish things in 
this world than to do wise ones.” 

I replied that although I had no particular 
ambition, still I did not despair of leading a 
life which would prove satisfactory to myself, 
even if it might not be one which would be 
generally called successful. 

“ The truly successful man,” he replied, 
“ as has already been said of the greatest 
rogue, is never found out. Success is a bit- 
terness, something depending on the power 
to use men and amuse women. Success,” he 
spoke with a strange intensity, “success — a 
moment of satiety after years of want ; for 
success is always intrenched behind a failure, 
won through and beyond the fosse of defeat. 
Success,” he continued bitterly, “when a man 
must so often be a charlatan to succeed in the 
world, a fool to enj oy it, and yet — strange para- 
dox — a hypocrite to seem satisfied to leave it.” 


IDUNA 


13 


We sat at the table a short time, and then 
went out on the terrace, from which we could 
look on the sea, now lit by the rising moon. 
Mr. Dacre told me that Alda could not bear 
the night air, and added that she always spent 
the evening with her sister. But little more 
was said, as he soon left me, telling me that 
he should not see me at breakfast, but that 
he hoped to meet me in the library at eleven 
o’clock in the morning. 

As I sat smoking late into the night, I pon- 
dered deeply on what I had heard and seen, 
seeking a solution of the multiplying ques- 
tions which arose. I thought of the prob- 
able nature of the communication which I 
could not doubt was to be made to me in the 
morning ; but gradually — perhaps because I 
had long ago exhausted, all power of con- 
jecture in that direction — my thoughts wan- 
dered. Why had I not seen Iduna? What 
could be the reason for her seclusion? I 
hoped that the morrow might bring also an 

answer to these questions. 

* * * 

I arose early, after a night of fitful sleep, 
and, breakfasting alone, I spent the time be- 
fore the appointed hour in exploring some 


14 


IDUNA 


part of the extensive grounds. The place 
was more splendid even than I had thought 
it. 

It was exactly eleven when I entered the 
library and found Mr. Dacre seated where I 
had first seen him. He seemed wearied, or he 
was really more worn and older than I had 
thought him. He did not rise, but, glancing 
at me, pointed to a chair near his own. 

“ I suppose,” he began, “ that you have no 
idea why I have sent for you ?” 

I said that I had not. 

*‘You have never thought of marriage?” 
he asked abruptly. 

I replied, in great amazement, that I never 
had in any personal sense. 

‘‘Your father and I,” he continued, with 
the same directness and gazing steadfastly at 
me, “ as you well know, were dear friends — 
friends in that rare, long friendship which no 
doubt dare ever assail — a friendship stronger 
than life. When my daughter Iduna was 
born, ten years after yourself, your father and 
I agreed — we but ratified an agreement our 
life-long friendship seemed to have made for 
us — that you should marry.” 

I was utterly astounded. Although my 


IDUNA 


15 


conjectures had taken, as I supposed, all pos- 
sible and impossible directions, I had never 
thought of anything of the nature of this 
announcement. I did not, or rather I could 
not, reply. 

“ It was the wish of your father’s latter 
life — of his death-bed. I sat by that death- 
bed ; I saw the gathering darkness of the 
great calamity close around him.” He was 
for the moment too much moved for further 
speech, but he soon controlled himself and 
went on. I had before seen those I loved 
pass away, and from my earliest years I had 
been awed by the consciousness of death’s 
fearful presence, but not till then did I fully 
learn life’s lesson.” 

I did not understand him, but I did not 
even think of asking what he meant. 

His wish has long been mine, and now, 
when we first meet in your maturer years, I 
find it stronger than ever before.” 

He paused for a moment. 

In the meantime you were to know noth- 
ing of this, you were to be free ; for I would 
have no inexperienced, domesticated, home- 
taught being, led only by the lines of our 
compact. I wanted a man, vivid, schooled 


i6 IDUNA 

by events, strong in complete manhood, to 
win my child, appreciating how much he 
won.” 

I was so busied with my crowding thoughts 
that I still sat silent. 

“ And now,” he continued, somewhat hesi- 
tatingly, I have to disclose something — 
something which may make all impossible — 
something which places my child apart from 
all the world — something which makes her 
higher than any living being — something so 
strange, so exceptional, that you will not at 
first fully realize the meaning of what I say.” 

I looked at him in wonder. 

What I am about to reveal to you,” he 
went on, “ has arisen from the conditions of 
my own life. I have never known that full, 
whole happiness which some contend is pos- 
sible. I have never even known the light 
heedlessness which passes with the world for 
happiness. I have never been happy either 
in the true or the accepted meaning of the 
word. One by one I have seen those die to 
whom my heart was bound by every ligament 
of love. From my young years the world 
has seemed to me but an endless vault where 
the footsteps brought no progress, the voice 


IDUNA 


17 


awoke no echo; where the eye dwelt on no 
color, and the ear listened to tidings from no 
real land ; through which life struggled to its 
end, borne down with its one whole truth — 
the dread truth that all is nothing. Why 
are the words of the wise man all that there 
is of wisdom — ‘ all is vanity’? At the time 
when men should be exultant in their life, 
their strength, my friend, my true friend, was 
hurried from me.” He hesitated, but almost 
immediately continued. “ What I then 
thought a culmination was, after all, only a 
degree of grief. I loved her mother,” the 
strong voice shook. “ I was doomed to watch 
her slowly failing strength, to see the begin- 
ning, the progress of that insidious disease 
by which death most stealthily approaches 
its victims. The children lived — Alda, who I 
feared might soon follow her mother; Iduna, 
younger, and strong with the principle of 
life. I had suffered, and I wished to spare 
them. Could I not, throughout this life, 
cheat Death himself — Death, the true source 
of all our woe, the destroyer of every hope ? 
All life must end, and the bitter knowledge 
taints its every moment. Faiths to me — re- 
member, I speak only of myself — seem but 


2 


i8 IDUNA 

the inventions of men, subterfuges, evasions 
of the truth that there is nothing beyond the 
grave — evasions that promise much, but allay 
nothing. I would give all I possess for the 
faith of the humblest, the faith that beyond 
this life we may be what this magnificent 
human nature, freed from hindering passion, 
stripped of encumbering flesh, immeasurable 
in all it is, should be — I would give all for 
the sweet, the abiding, the all-sustaining faith 
of the humblest who believes. I was deter- 
mined that Iduna — for Alda already knew 
the truth — should live a life happier than 
any ever before led by human being. She 
should know nothing of the taint, the terror 
of existence. She does not. She does 
not know that there is such a thing as 
death.” 

He fell back in his chair exhausted. 

Through her whole life,” he soon con- 
tinued more calmly, “ Iduna has been guard- 
ed, kept from the terrible knowledge. She 
was too young to know of her mother’s 
death. Alda believed that she had inherited 
the fatal disease, but has always kept such 
knowledge from her sister. Only thus could 
Iduna have led the happy life she has. In 


IDUNA 


19 


almost entire renunciation of individual exist- 
ence, Alda has lived for her sister — has given 
her life, that must at best be short, to make 
her sister happy. And Iduna has lived as no 
one has ever lived before — happier than any 
human being — for, of all animate things, 
boasted, boastful man is the poorest. Look 
at the lowlier dwellers on the earth — the deni- 
zens of the air and of the sea. Through their 
lives they seem filled with the gladness of im- 
mortality. The meanest thing that crawls 
basks in the sunlight of its existence, un- 
chilled by the thought of death. 

“ But,” he continued, ‘‘ the time has now 
come for her to learn the truth — for learn it 
some day, sooner or later, she must. Alda 
will follow her mother — not soon, I think, for 
I have done what I could — and then Iduna 
must know. I have sent for you in fulfilment 
of my agreement with your father. My hope, 
my whole hope, is now in you. Win her, and 
under the dominion of strong and revealing 
love she can best hear the truth.” 

But,” I said, “ I—” 

“You will find her young and fair,” he in- 
terrupted. “ Win her, and you will be the 
happiest among men.” 


20 


IDUNA 


“ But,” I continued, “ I have not the vanity 
to think I might succeed.” 

“ She is hardly more than a child. She has 
seen no one, and if she had, you are. not one 
to fail in finding favor in a young girl’s eyes.” 

He. placed his hand on my shoulder as he 
spoke, with the greatest kindliness he had 
yet shown me, and, seeming to loose the ten- 
sion in which he had held himself, he almost 
smiled. 

“You shall see Iduna at luncheon,” he 
continued. “ But remember, what you under- 
take will not be easy. You must not let fall 
a word which could awaken even an inquiry 
as to what she does not know.” 

Mr. Dacre arose and silently left me. 

I did not stir. The wonderful, and even 
the strange, had always held a charm for me. 
It seemed that through them I could often 
best catch glimpses of that underlying princi- 
ple, that intellectual picturesqueness, that es- 
sential of clear, high pleasure, which we, half 
sneeringly, call romance — that romance which, 
often hidden, lies in the life of every one, and 
which, once discovered, explains much and 
glorifies all. Already, and with strange, 
forerunning feeling, I was half in love with 


IDUNA 


21 


this young girl, so singularly blessed — or 
cursed. 

I was so busy with my thoughts that the 
time passed quickly, and the hour for my 
presentation to Iduna came before I real- 
ized it. 

Mr. Dacre met me, and led me through a 
long gallery, where, in the pictures on the 
wall, I recognized the color or the manner of 
many a great painter, to a part of the house 
where I had not yet been. He paused before 
a heavily curtained door, and said to me in a 
low tone : 

“ Be on your guard.” 

The room into which he led me was singu- 
larly different from the others I had seen. I 
felt as if I had passed out of some dark cav- 
ern into the clear noontide. Here all was 
graceful, fanciful, bright. The broad day fell 
on light tones and delicate textures. Flowers 
were everywhere, and through the large, low 
windows I could see what I can best call a 
garden — a garden in the meaning of the word 
in the time of Cowley and Evelyn — with 
carefully kept walks and trim beds, gay with 
the blooms of midsummer. 

Alda was seated at a piano, on which, I 


22 


IDUNA 


noticed, lay a violin, but she rose as we en- 
tered. I gazed upon her delicate face, where 
still deepened the expression of calm resigna- 
tion, with a new interest, now that I had been 
told about her life. 

“ Iduna will be here in a moment,” she 
said. 

Almost as she spoke a portiere was lifted, 
and a young girl entered the room. 

She was not only the most beautiful crea- 
ture I had ever seen, she seemed a being such 
as vagrant fancy or imagination’s self may 
only show for a moment — a realization of 
the vision of some rapt, rare hour, lovelier 
than I might ever hope to see in life. I 
would not attempt to describe her had I 
never seen her again, for I was more than 
dazzled. Even now I can say little more 
than that her hair was dark, and that she had 
dark eyes — eyes that looked steadily at you, 
trusting, unhesitating, questioning, as the 
grave eyes of children, appealing to you for 
revelation of strange things, wonderful, but 
by no possibility untrue. She seemed the 
embodiment of youth ; of air from out some 
fresh break in the sky ; of sunlight, the only 
thing in all this material world ever unques- 


IDUNA 


23 


tionably new ; of all that is healthful and 
joyous in nature. 

“ Good-morning, papa ; you are late,” she 
said. “ I thought you were not coming.” 

I can hear her voice now, so clear and yet 
so full of meaning — vibrant, it almost seemed, 
with harmonies of far association. 

“Yes,” answered Mr. Dacre, “but I have 
brought one who will help me bear any re- 
proach.” 

“ I am very glad you have come,” she said, 
looking at me gravely. “ Papa, I fear some- 
times, is very lonely.” 

I had been greatly perplexed when I 
thought what might be the difficulty of avoid- 
ing allusion to all that I had been told to 
avoid. But now, when I was in her presence, 
I felt at once that this would be more than 
easy. Had I not been told all that I had, I 
would not have thought that her life had 
been in any way unusual ; she appeared so 
perfectly natural, and so like any other very 
intelligent and well-brought-up young girl. 

“ He hardly need be so,” I said, thought- 
lessly, in my new confidence. “ One might 
be utterly happy here without seeing a 
soul.” 


24 


IDUNA 


She looked up at me quickly in a startled 
way. 

“ A soul,” she said, and then, pausing a 
moment, added, I wonder what you mean.” 

“ Anybody,” I replied, confusedly, as Alda 
glanced at me warningly. 

“A soul,” she repeated, musingly. “It 
must be some new word.” 

“ We will go to luncheon,” said Mr. Dacre, 
almost sternly. 

I saw Iduna look at him in surprise, as if 
such tone were new to her, and then follow 
Alda into the next room. 

“ I have not seen this part of the grounds,” 
I said, looking out of the window. 

“ It is my own garden. Not even Alda 
touches a leaf in it. There I gather my own 
roses,” she said, “ and am wounded by my 
own thorns.” 

“ It must give you a charming occupa- 
tion,” I replied, resolved to be as safely com- 
monplace as possible ; and then, remembering 
the piano and violin I had seen, I added, 
“ But you have others ; you are fond of 
music?” 

“Above all else,” she answered enthusias- 
tically; “ but I like my violin better than my 


IDUNA 


25 


piano — it is a very wonderful one. I will 
show it to you after luncheon — no, I will 
get it now,” and she impulsively rose. 

“ Music is the only thing that is quite 
safe,” said Mr. Dacre, after she had left the 
room. 

See,” she said, as she returned with the 
violin, it was made more than two hundred 
years ago by a man of the name of Stradi- 
varius. I am going to ask papa to have him 
make another for me.” 

She spoke with such simple belief, such 
confidence in what she said, that I did not 
for the moment appreciate its remarkable 
nature. It seemed for the instant that the 
master still lived — still wrought at Cremona. 

Alda seldom spoke, and I could see that 
her eyes followed every motion of her sister 
with tender interest. She seemed utterly lost 
in Iduna and to have no thought for herself. 
It was startling in its strangeness and pathos, 
the relation existing between these two young 
girls, so far apart in thought', so close in love 
— so different, and yet made so alike by the 
serenity and isolation of their lives. 

Iduna spoke of herself with the utter un- 
reserve of a child. 


26 


ID UNA 


I am a little sad sometimes/’ she said, 

but papa tells me I live very much as other 
girls do, only that I am happier than they, 
and of course he knows. Alda knows much 
more than I do, and she says as he does ; but 
if I knew as much, I am sure I would not be 
satisfied to live as she does. Sometimes I 
think I would like something else — what, I 
do not know. Alda tells me that the world 
is very large, and I know there is much in it 
I would like to see. I go to the big globe, 
and I find a little dot called London, which 
Alda tells me is a great city where there are 
millions of people, and then I find another 
little dot called Paris, which is another great 
place, where she says that they would under- 
stand me if I spoke French ; but when I ask 
papa about them he says they are wicked 
and ugly. But still I should like to see them 
— once.” 

I have seen them,” I answered, “ and I 
am sure that they would only make you un- 
happy.” 

“But,^’ continued Iduna, “there are other 
things. I know about the opera — for Alda 
has told me — where there is a crowd of peo- 
ple and wonderful music ; and then there are 


IDUNA 


27 


balls where everything is beautiful and you 
dance. Oh, I sometimes want it all to begin.” 

She paused, and, as she gazed afar off, her 
eyes caught lustre from the lights of the vague 
and brilliant scenes that arose before her. 

After luncheon, while Mr. Dacre and Alda 
sat under the shadow of a huge awning, for 
the noonday heat was great, I walked with 
Iduna in her garden — 

“ The fairest garden in her looks, 

And in her mind ” 

something infinitely beyond the wisdom of 
“ the wisest books.” 

“ But does this really interest you ?” she 
asked. 

“ Why should it not ?” I replied. 

“ I should think,” she said, “ that a man 
who can go everywhere would not care for 
such things. I am sure I should not. But” — 
and she stopped suddenly — “ I must not say 
this. You saw how grieved papa looked at 
luncheon.” 

Soon we reached a weather-stained stone 
seat that had been placed at a commanding 
point, and sat down. 

How beautiful !” I exclaimed, involunta- 


28 


IDUNA 


rily, looking out on a wonderful expanse of 
verdant land and glistening sea. 

“ Is it ?” asked Iduna. “ I have never seen 
anything else.” 

We looked for a moment in silence on the 
scene. 

“ Tell me about it,” she said, with a pretty 
air of command. 

“What?” I asked. 

“ The great, big world. I am never tired 
of hearing about it. There must be other 
beautiful places, and it must be full of lovely 
things and charming people.” 

“ And of great wrongs and forbidding 
sights,” I added. 

“ That is what papa says,” she replied, sor- 
rowfully. 

“What a fine dog!” I exclaimed, wishing 
to turn her thoughts in another direction, as 
a large mastiff took his slow, lounging way 
down the walk. 

“ Is he not handsome ?” she said. “ And I 
have others, and I have birds. Do you know,” 
she continued, after an instant’s hesitation, 
“ something so strange happened to one of 
my birds.” 

“ What ?” I asked. 


IDUNA 


29 


“ About a week ago,” she said, speaking 
with an air of mystery, “ I found it lying in 
its cage quite cold and stiff. They said that 
it was not well, as they say I am ill when my 
head aches after I have been in the sun, but 
this was not like that. It lay very still. I 
do not think that it could move at all.” 
She looked up at me inquiringly. “They 
took it away, and it only came back yester- 
day.” 

“ And is that strange ?” 

“ No,” and her pure, clear eyes met mine in 
actual demand. “ But I do not believe that 
it is the same bird.” 

“ Are you not mistaken ?” 

“ No; I am quite sure,” she replied. “ But 
why did they not bring back my bird ?” 

I could make no answer. 

Mr. Dacre and Alda soon joined us. I saw 
that he thought I had remained long enough, 
and therefore, though I would have given 
much to have seen Iduna longer, I accompa- 
nied him on his almost immediate return to 
the house. 

Alda did not leave her sister. 

“ The coming of a stranger is a great event 
in her life,” said Mr. Dacre, as we walked 


30 


IDUNA 


along, ‘‘ and her excitement, I feared, would 
be great.” 

He looked at me with his peculiarly pierc- 
ing glance, evidently striving to see what im- 
pression Iduna’s beauty and grace had made. 
It was plain that he was satisfied with what 
he saw, though I doubt if he recognized the 
full extent of my feeling. Beside all else, I 
felt as if I had stood in some place hallowed 
by Heaven’s highest attributes — peace and 
eternal duration. Iduna almost seemed to 
me the immortal being she thought herself, 
whose only world could be the world in which 
she thought she lived. 

“ Tell me,” I said, “ how has she been kept 
in ignorance so long?” 

“ Love can do much,” he answered, “ and 
she has always had her sister’s care. When 
her mother died I withdrew from the world. 
I, who had hitherto known only a fevered and 
intense existence, desired to live in complete 
seclusion. My disappearance caused at the 
time much surprise ; but as the years have 
passed I have been forgotten, and now at last 
am left in peace. I came here in the hope 
that my children might escape the disease 
that I knew threatened them. Here I have 


IDUNA 


31 


ever since remained, with what content mem- 
ory and prescience allow me. Alda and Iduna 
have been, as you see them, always alone — 
Alda learning much, that she might teach her 
sister. And thus Iduna has been able to know 
all usually known by young girls, except those 
fictions called histories, and those histories 
called fictions. And why should she know 
these ? — the first so often false records of act- 
ual existences, which, having received the 
sanction of time, serve the world as well as 
truths ; the second, true records of unreal 
existences, called false because they are but 
the creatures of imagination, and which in 
the comparative simplicity of their incom- 
pleteness can only be fully understood, and 
are therefore more truthful than the real; 
existences, however, in that very incomplete- 
ness so different from multiform humanity 
that they are as delusive to the inexperience 
of youth as they are unsatisfactory to the 

wisdom of age.” 

* * * 

It amazed me, and I dwelt upon it after 
Mr. Dacre had left me, that he should fail to 
recognize that Iduna could not learn with- 
out danger the truth incompatible with every 


32 


IDUNA 


thought of her life — that truth which none 
of us could bear save through its habitual 
and familiar but almost unrecognized pres> 
ence. I saw that a great danger threatened 
her, and I determined that I would, if it were 

possible, avert it. 

* * -x- 

A few days passed, and already the time 
when I was away from Iduna seemed a sum 
of hateful seconds, minutes, hours, to be 
borne as best it might. I regarded it only as 
so much superfluous existence. I was torn, 
worn, perplexed by all that at its best is pain 
and at its worst is pleasure. In short, I was 
in love. I sought the sea, as have the lovers 
of all ages; and in the ceaseless beat and 
regular pulse of the changing, changeless 
waves I seemed to find a certain peace. 

I sometimes almost brought myself to be- 
lieve that Iduna was touched with something 
which, even if recognized, v/ould be inexpli- 
cable to herself — something trembling tow- 
ards love for me. I could hardly believe it 
possible that such happiness could be mine, 
and yet it seemed I sometimes saw it — saw 
the unrecognized truth that only the word- 
less eyes express. 


IDUNA 


33 


Those were very happy days, little pre- 
paring us for what was to come. 

One night Alda, who usually dined with 
Mr. Dacre and myself, sat with me, as the 
breeze was soft and warm, on the terrace, in 
the strong, white moonlight. 

“ Iduna,” she said, “ has lately passed the 
most eventful days of her life.’’ 

“Your own life,” I answered, “has scarcely 
been one of greater variety.” 

“Not in incident, but in thought; for I 
have always known of the last great change.” 

“You must have found your task some- 
times a hard one.” 

“ No,” she replied, “ for it has been no 
task ; it has been a duty which I have loved 
to fulfil. You know that my belief is the 
same as my father’s — that our acts only are 
immortal ; that every action of our lives starts 
a series of events that continues always, in- 
creasing and widening forever. When I was 
a little girl he explained it all to me. I have 
always known I must die, as it is called, very 
soon.” She spoke with a calmness, pathetic 
in it's deep despair. “ And in all I have done 
I have only gone on living a life that is to 
live.” 


3 


34 


IDUNA 


I listened, profoundly moved. 

“ The dread of death,” she continued, 
“ robs us of all real happiness. Could my 
sister have led the glad life she has, had she 
known the truth ? Would not every hour 
have been darkened by the coming doom ? 
Could I bring sorrow on one I loved as I 
loved her? And would I not have done this 
if she had known all ? And now — ” 

She looked at me in an agony of supplica- 
tion. 

“Will you, can you help me?” she said, in 
a low, thrilling tone. 

“ I will do anything,” I answered — “ any- 
thing.” 

“ I have no one to whom I can go for help 
but you.” 

“ Your father,” I suggested. 

“ He least of any one,” she said, and I saw 
that she slightly shuddered. “ I dare not tell 
him.” 

“ Can you not tell me ?” I asked. 

“ I do not know. Wait — I was weak — it 
was an impulse. I must see what is right.” 

She sat silent for a long time, almost rigid 
in the intensity of thought. 

“ I must go,” she said, suddenly rising. 


IDUNA 


35 


Later in the evening when alone I tried to 
read, to write, but could do neither. My life 
was strange and difficult. When with Iduna 
I was forced to assume a gayety I might not 
feel. I must be no spot in her sunshine, no 
blot on the face of her fair world. With Alda 
I felt all the suffering of a life without joy in 
the present, without hope for the future ; I 
shared her sorrow as I seemed to share 
Iduna’s happiness. 

They were both excellent musicians, play- 
ing with great skill and feeling, and Iduna — 
Alda did not sing — often sang for me with- 
out the slightest embarrassment, and with the 
free, natural impulse of a bird. Her voice was 
pure and rare, and moved me deeply. Then 
I first noticed a slight shade of care in any- 
thing she did, and I wondered what could 
have taught her the low, wild sadness that 
throbbed in those glorious tones. Her songs 
were, of course, such as could awaken no sus- 
picion of the truth kept from her. 

One day I came upon some sketches made 
by the sisters, which showed great artistic 
feeling and much technical excellence. 

“How did you learn to do this?” I asked 
Iduna. 


36 


IDUNA 


“ Oh/’ she exclaimed, “ Alda taught me. 

She has taught me everything.” 

* * * 

As Iduna always had been, so was she now, 
deeply interested in the outer world. She 
regarded me as a new-comer from that won- 
derful place, with the same feeling of awe and 
admiration with which people of old must 
have looked upon some one who had just 
returned from a long and perilous journey 
through distant and unknown countries. She 
could not have viewed me with more curios- 
ity had I been an inhabitant of another world, 
and indeed I could not have come from one 
any stranger than the one she pictured to 
herself. As I realized more and more what 
she thought, I was more and more amazed. 
To her, Velasquez still wielded his heroic 
brush, Titian yet created his wondrous tones, 
and Rembrandt held sway over light and 
shadow. To her, Handel still wrote orato- 
rios, Mozart operas, and Schubert songs. To 
her, many a great writer of the past, known 
through verses untouched with mortality, still 
lived. I wondered how much she had really 
learned of the great names of history, and I 
once incautiously spoke of Napoleon. 


IDUNA 


37 


“ Napoleon,” she said ; “ who is he?” 

A very great man.” 

“ Does he make music or pictures or poe- 
try?” 

None of these,” I answered. 

“ But you say he is a very great man.” 

I could not tell her that he was a great 
soldier, something she could not understand. 

But what does he make ?” she insisted. 

“ Nothing.” 

“ Then how is he great ? Oh, I know,” she 
exclaimed, suddenly ; “ he does a great deal 
of good.” 

^‘No.” 

Then how is he great ?” 

The ruler of a people is always great,” I 
answered, evasively, 

“ But he is only great because he can do 
so much good,” she replied, triumphantly. 

So you see I was right.” 

I tried to learn her simple ideas of the con- 
ditions of life. I found that she had not 
hitherto sought to explain much ; indeed, she 
had not been allowed to see much that she 
would think should be explained. She lived 
absolutely secluded, and never talked with 
any one except her father, Alda, and myself. 


38 


IDUNA 


“ I like,” she said, “ to think of the crowded 
world, to imagine myself in cities, to fancy 
that I wander through their streets, to listen 
to the sound of many voices. I wonder if 
what I think is at all like what they really 
are.” 

I could not tell her how much her radiant 

visions differed from reality. 

* * * 

Within a few days I again found myself 
alone with Alda on the terrace. 

“ I want,” she said, hurriedly, “ to finish 
what I began to tell you.” 

“Yes,” I answered, and I felt that what she 
was about to say was of such a nature as to 
preclude formal speech. 

“ I have not dared to tell my father. I do 
not know how he could bear it. I have strug- 
gled alone with my sorrow.” She paused, 
looking wistfully out over the sea. “ I shall 
not live much longer.” 

I uttered an abrupt exclamation of dis- 
sent. 

“ I am not as strong as you all think I am. 
Day by day I have striven to appear well, 
but I am afraid I cannot much longer main- 
tain the deception. At any moment I may 


IDUNA 


39 


be too weak to act my part, and I tremble to 
think of what Avill happen to him — to Iduna.’' 

I saw in an instant of fearful recognition 
the terrors of the impending catastrophe. If 
Mr. Dacre Avere called upon again to bear 
the visitation of his dread enemy — if Iduna 
were suddenly to learn that she must thus 
part from her ‘sister, and that every thought 
of her life was mistaken — I could but fear 
the worst. 

“ I ask you for help/’ she said. “ I have, as 
I told you, no one else to whom I can go.” 

“What can I do?” I asked eagerly. “What- 
ever you want me to do I Avill do.” 

“ My father must know the truth.” 

“And you wish me to tell him!” I ex- 
claimed, almost in terror. 

“Yes. I cannot do it.” 

I stood appalled at the difficulty, the pain- 
fulness of what she proposed, but never for 
an instant did I think of refusing to do as she 
wished. 

“ I will tell him,” I answered, quickly, “ that 
you say you are not as strong as he thinks 
you are — not that you fear the worst. In- 
deed,” I added, “ I cannot believe that I need 
say that.” 


40 


IDUNA 


“ Even what you tell him will shock him 
greatly,” she said, entirely disregarding the 
latter part of what I had said. 

“ But he must be told.” 

“Wait — wait,” she said, suddenly. “Wait 
at least another day. I may be better. I 
will find an opportunity to tell you what to 
do. I must think.” 

I passed a night of agonizing thought. I 
could only hope that Alda, overcome by mor- 
bid fancies, imagined herself worse than she 
really was. I could only await, with what 
courage and confidence I might, the course 
of events. 

I was more impressed than ever with the 
strangeness of my position when I met Iduna 
on the following morning. She was standing 
with the bright sunlight falling on her, and 
the scarlet, yellow, and purple glories of the 
summer about her. In her hand she held a 
dead butterfly. It was a wondrous allegory, 
this fair young creature looking with such 
gentle interest at this emblem of the soul. I 
thought she gazed upon it as some angel 
might upon some newly disembodied spirit. 

“ See,” she said, glancing up perplexedly 
from the gorgeously colored thing, “there is 


IDUNA 


41 


something the matter with it. I think it 
must be broken.” 

She spoke as she might of a watch that 
had stopped running. 

“ Yes,” I answered, as if in inquiry, and 
anxiously awaiting what she might say. 

“Will it never fly again?” she asked. 

I affected to examine it with great care. 

“ It is very strange,” she went on, “ but 
what becomes of them when they are broken? 
Are they not mended 

“ No,” I replied. 

“Why?” 

“ I suppose,” I answered, “ no one cares 
enough for them.” 

“ But I do — the beautiful thing. Take it,” 
she said, with an air of authority, placing 
the dead insect in my hand, “ and have it 
mended.” 

She was for a moment lost in deep thought, 
and then asked : 

“ But are people never broken ?” 

I dared not answer. 

“ If I should fall from the top of the cliff, 
I should be broken ?” 

“ Yes,” I replied. 

“And then I should be mended,” she con- 


42 


IDUNA 


tinued, meditatively. “ It is all very strange. 
I never thought of it before. I once saw a 
man who had but one arm. He looked very 
poor. I suppose he was mended badly.” 

My presence in her father’s house had 
awakened her to many an inquiry, and she 
seemed now on the very verge of the great 
discovery. Mr. Dacre told me that she had 
changed greatly in a short time. Heretofore, 
she had heard everything with the simple 
confidence of childhood, and, indeed, in much 
she was but a child. But now she seemed to 
have grown suddenly older, and there ap- 
peared a vague doubt in her voice, and a cer- 
tain misgiving in her eyes. Still, her world 
seemed really untouched ; still, she lived 
among her own fair visions, thinking 

“Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of 
thought.” 

But in her mind there was unaccustomed ac- 
tivity, intermittent, but evidently increasing. 

I remember that very day we saw a bird 
soaring in the air, and that she murmured 
the first half-dozen stanzas of Shelley’s Sky- 
lark.” 

‘‘Spirit?” I interrupted. 


IDUNA 


43 


“ Oh,” she answered, “ do you not under- 
stand? — a fairy.” 

“ Do you believe in fairies?” I asked. 

Of course,” she answered, looking at me 
in surprise. “ Do not you ?” 

“ Some do not,” I said. 

“ How very strange!” she replied, wonder- 
ingly. “ But everything is very strange now. 
I feel as I never have felt before. I feel as 
if I were far away somewhere — in a place I 
had never seen before. I feel as if I were 
lost.” 

She seemed, indeed, lost in vague wonder- 
ment, and, to distract her attention, I asked 
her if she knew the rest. 

“ Oh, yes,” she answered, with a quick re- 
turn to her own glad self. 

She repeated the last four stanzas. The 
others had evidently not been taught to her. 
* * * 

I awaited all day, with great anxiety, the 
promised message from Alda, but none came. 
I tried to hope that all might still be well. 
But in the evening what little confidence I 
had was in a moment destroyed. 

“ You must tell him,” she Avhispered, hur- 
riedly, as I held back a curtain for her to 


44 


IDUNA 


pass. “ Tell him the most that you think is 
right.” 

After she had taken a step or two she 
turned back. 

“Tell him soon,” she said; “tell him to- 
morrow.” 

I felt that we were on the verge of some 
terrible experience. I could not but believe 
that what she feared must soon come to pass. 
Her accents of anguish carried conviction, 
and I shuddered at the thought of what 
might be immediately before us. 

Early the next morning I received a hur- 
ried note from Mr. Dacre, begging me to 
come to him with all speed. 

Before he spoke I saw that his grief was 
terrible. 

“ Alda,” he said, shudderingly, “ is very ill.” 

With a quick prescience of impending evil 
that only long suffering could give, he fore- 
saw all. 

I had not expected so rude an awakening. I 
asked him what he had done, and learned that 
he had sent to the metropolis for a famous 
physician, who was to come with all the speed 
unlimited expenditure could make possible. 


IDUNA 


45 


Iduna had often been left alone while Alda 
was with Mr. Dacre, and it was therefore easy 
to keep her from suspecting anything. I would 
be able satisfactorily to answer any inquiry 
about her sister by saying that she was busy 
with her father. 

As I entered the room I paused for an in- 
stant at the door. Iduna was singing, and I 
caught the refrain of a song I had written 
for her : 

A grief that comes 
Is a joy when sped ; 

And a joy, after all, 

Is a grief when fled. 

“ What do you know,” I asked, trying to 
speak cheerfully, “ of griefs and joys?” 

“ Oh, very much.” 

‘WVhat is a grief?” I asked, and I thought 
that she might soon know grief greater than 
she could bear. 

“A grief — it is when the winter comes, 
when the night draws on, when the day is 
dark with clouds.” 

Her deep sympathy with nature was height- 
ened by her utter ignorance of anything really 
like human experience, and she there found a 
source for grief which is common to us all. I 


46 


IDUNA 


thought that indeed sorrow must be equal in 
all lives. Her sensitive nature felt the mourn- 
ful aspects of the outer world with singular 
intensity, and she was as much affected by 
such subtle and generally disregarded influ- 
ences as is an ordinary mortal by the harrow- 
ing occurrences of life. 

“And joy?” I continued. 

“ It is when you hear gay music, when the 
flowers come, and when the sun shines.” 

Music for her but expressed the changing 
phases of nature. To her it had never sobbed 
a dirge or pealed a requiem. 

In the afternoon the physician arrived. 
We awaited what he might say in agonizing 
suspense. 

I was with Mr. Dacre when the opinion 
was given, and I could see that he tried to 
prepare himself to hear the worst. The great 
physician, with that gentle, scarcely broken 
impassibility which, as a frequent bearer of 
the tidings of death, he had insensibly ac- 
quired, spoke hesitatingly but positively. He 
tried to break all to us as gently as possible, 
but did not attempt to conceal the truth. 
There was no room for hope. 

“The disease has made such inroads,” he 


IDUNA 


47 


said, finally, “ that I must warn you that the 
end may be very near.” 

Mr. Dacre did not even raise his head. He 
said nothing until we were alone, and then he 
burst wildly forth : 

Again the curse has come upon me. 
Again must I endure the unutterable agony 
of a last parting. Death, Death, my enemy 
and my conqueror, when will you complete 
your work and make me your grateful vic- 
tim ?” 

He paused in sudden thought. 

“ But Iduna!” he exclaimed. 

“ She cannot be told,” I said, decisively, 
“ it might kill her.” 

It might kill her!” he repeated slowly, as 
if at first he did not apprehend what I said ; 
and then he added, as if its full meaning had 
suddenly flooded in upon him with all the 
anguish and dismay it could bring, ‘‘ I had 
thought she might live on happily, and that 
when she learned the truth, her happy years 
would help her to bear it. It might kill her! 
Outraged Death fills me with a new terror.” 

His grief and horror overcame him. 

What can be done ?” he asked at length, 
helplessly. 


48 


IDUNA 


“ We must tell her that Alda is going 
away,” I answered, feeling that something 
must indeed be done, and being unable in 
my consternation to think of anything better. 

“Yes,” he replied, obediently. 

“We will gain time — Alda may recover — 
all may be well yet.” 

I went immediately to Iduna, whom I now 
felt it my duty to protect. She again asked 
for Alda, and I told her that she was busy 
with her father, thinking it wise to delay as 
much as possible the announcement that her 
sister was going away. She was painting, 
and she showed me her work. 

“ Is it like a city?” she asked. 

It was the city of a dream. Tall palaces 
rose one above another, fountains plashed in 
the great squares, and through the marble 
ways poured throngs of people, clad in gold 
and purple. On the broad, dark waters of 
the harbor rode stately ships, while a sky of 
perfect blue bent down to meet the dim and 
distant mountains. Faulty though the work 
might be, and inspired as it was by the pict- 
ures of Turner, the effect was indescribable. 
It was a vision dazzling, bewildering, beauti- 
ful, that she alone could have seen. 


IDUNA 


49 


As the day passed, Alda became stronger 
and asked to see her sister. Though no real 
farewell was possible, she wished to speak 
once more to Iduna. Unnatural, horrible 
even as such an interview must be, who could 
deny her this last request? She insisted, I 
was afterwards told, on rising, and leaning on 
her father — almost carried by him — she 
reached Iduna’s apartments. 

I would have withdrawn, but Mr. Dacre 
motioned me to remain. 

“ You have not come all day,” said Iduna, 
reproachfully. Alda, as soon as she was 
in the presence of her sister, seemed to 
regain her strength in a marvellous man- 
ner. 

‘^Yes.” 

Why ?” 

‘‘ I am going away.” 

Going away !” repeated Iduna in won- 
der. 

Yes.” 

“ Oh, I am so glad !” 

I involuntarily put out my hand, seeking 
support. 

“ Glad — glad, Iduna !” said Alda, slowly. 

“Yes. Glad, so very glad! You will see 

4 


50 


IDUNA 


SO much, and when you come back you will 
tell it all to me.” 

“ But,” said Alda, and to me who knew her 
infinite anguish, it seemed she spoke with a 
calmness not of the earth, “ I may be gone a 
long time.” 

A long time,” answered Iduna in amaze- 
ment. “ There is no long time. We have 
all time. What can it matter?” 

“ Nothing.” 

“ And you will see the world — you will see 
all of which we have talked and dreamed. 
How happy you will be.” 

‘Hf you are happy, then I am happy.” 

“ I am happy, only — ” and she paused. “ I 
should be so glad to go with you.” 

“It is a journey upon which I must go 
alone.” 

Where?” 

“ I do not know.” 

“ And why ?” 

“ I cannot tell.” 

“ Will papa go with you ?” 

“ No.” 

Already Alda’s strength was failing; in- 
deed, I do not think she could have borne 
longer the agony of that last, strange parting. 


IDUNA 


51 


“ Shall I see you again before you go ?” 
Iduna asked. 

No,” replied Alda, for the first time losing 
her marvellous self-control. “ I am going 
now.” 

I shall think of you every moment,” said 
Iduna, gently. Parting had, in her belief that 
life was endless, no meaning such as embit- 
ters the slightest separation from those we 
love. 

Mr. Dacre had stood as if stupefied by be- 
numbing woe. His eyes were fixed and 
meaningless, and his lips painfully rigid. He 
looked like one in a trance. 

As the sisters drew close in an embrace 
which I knew would be the last, I turned 
away. 

Once out of Iduna’s sight, Alda’s will sus- 
tained her no longer, and she sank uncon- 
scious. I feared that the end might come 
even then, and waited for some time before 
I returned to Iduna. I expected that she 
would immediately ask me if her sister had 
gone, but the thought that Alda would have 
remained after parting with her would have 
been impossible to her. 

The sky, which for days had been the per- 


52 


IDUNA 


fection of calm, clear blue, now seemed hazy 
and hot, and in the distance could be heard 
the low rumble of thunder. I saw Iduna 
start, and that a slight tremor passed over 
her. 

“You are afraid,” I said. 

“ It is terrible,” she exclaimed. “ If it 
comes while Alda is away, I do not know 
what I shall do.” 

The hours dragged slowly by, and, leaving 
Iduna, I sought news of Alda. Mr. Dacre 
was with her, and the attendants said that 
she was sinking fast. 

I returned to Iduna. 

She was gazing pensively upon the land- 
scape, which now lay under the lessening 
light of a fair, sunset sky ; for, as sometimes 
happens towards evening, the threatening 
heavens had cleared, and all was soft and 
golden. 

“ I have been thinking of Alda,” she said. 

“ Yes.” 

“ I feel a sadness that I never knew before. 
I wonder why she went.” 

“ She told you that she must.” 

“ She told me she could not tell me why 
she went, but she will tell me some time.” 


IDUNA 


53 


I had often been struck with Iduna’s sim- 
ple faith, and was not now surprised at her 
content with our inadequate explanation. 
Nothing seemed unnatural to her, for the 
reason that all her life was so unnatural. 
The wildest fancy of the most marvellous 
fairy tale would have seemed, in her ample 
trust, possible and usual. 

“ I do not feel as if I were myself,” she con- 
tinued, rising and walking rapidly up and 
down. “Something is coming — something 
I cannot understand.” 

“ What ?” I asked. 

“ I feel as if a darkness had fallen over 
everything.” 

Indeed, she seemed strangely changed. A 
fear lay in her eyes that I had never seen 
before. 

“ But I will think of Alda,” she continued. 
“ I will try and imagine where she is. I will 
think of her in the world so new to her. I 
will think of her looking with wondering 
eyes on so many strange things. I will think 
of her away off in that great wide place.” 

Her words were hideous to me in their 
terrible significance. Alda might indeed be 
in a new, strange world, stranger even than 


54 


IDUNA 


Iduna could imagine — so strange that phi- 
losopher or visionary in all earth’s genera- 
tions has never been able even to approach 

conception of it. 

* * * 

That night Alda died. 

She was conscious until the last, and even 
at that supreme moment, thought, as she had 
done all her life long, of others rather than 
herself. She spoke cheeringly to her father, 
trying to comfort him in his unutterable 
agony. She did not speak of Iduna, except 
to repeat her name again and again in tones 
of longing tenderness. When I heard some 
time after midnight that the end had come, 
I went out into the darkness — in my grief I 
could not endure the confining walls — and 
paced the echoing terrace until the sun rose. 
I did not see Mr. Dacre. He had not left 
the room where Alda died, and now sat, the 
physician told me, speechless by her side. 

I found Iduna as she had been the day be- 
fore, disturbed, restless, almost wild. 

‘‘ Tell me,” she said, coming eagerly tow- 
ards me, “ has Alda really gone ?” 

“Yes,” I answered. She could not know 
in what sense her sister had gone from her. 


IDUNA 


55 


I did not know — I have been thinking all 
night — it seemed that you were all keeping 
something from me.” 

Evidently she did not expect an answer; 
I did not make any. 

“ I remember, ” she continued, “ that a long 
time ago, a very long time ago, I once saw a 
book that had a strange word in it. I do not 
know why I remember it now, unless for the 
reason that it is the only thing that has ever 
really troubled me, and now when I am so 
sad I think of it.” 

“You must not trouble yourself about a 
word,” I said, but she did not hear me. The 
accumulated questionings of years of vague 
uncertainty seemed to be taking form. As 
steam, at first invisible, becomes perceptible 
vapor as it rises, and finally falls in drops, so 
were the dim exhalations of her doubts re- 
solving themselves into questions. 

“ It was a little word,” she went on, “ and 
I asked Alda what it meant, but she said it 
was something I must not know. How could 
a word mean something I must not know ?” 

Remember that I loved her passionately, 
wholly, unquestioningly, and you will perhaps 
understand with what torture I heard her 


56 


IDUNA 


speak as she did. I could do nothing to help 
her. I could only try and keep her from learn- 
ing that ghastly truth which, suddenly heard 
in all its awful entirety, none could bear. 

“ She said I must not know what it meant, 
and so I cannot ask you about it. There are 
things, then, we should not know?” 

“Yes,” I answered. 

“ How strange ! The world seems stranger 
every day. And must we not know, too, why 
we must not know?” 

“ Often.” 

* * * 

The day was intensely hot, and I told 
Iduna that the heavy, stifling atmosphere 
had affected her. 

“ No,” she replied, “ but I feel as if some- 
thing was to happen. I feel as I do before 
the thunder and the lightning come. I feel 
what Alda told me is called terror.” 

About noon a servant informed me that 
Mr. Dacre desired to see me. 

I was to meet him in the library. When 
I entered no one was there, and as I stood 
waiting, all the incidents of my stay in the 
house passed in rapid review. I thought of 
the happy, peaceful hours that at first flew 


IDUNA 


57 


SO swiftly by, hours in which my love for 
Iduna had grown to an overmastering pas- 
sion. I thought of Alda’s first appeal to me 
that night on the moonlit terrace, a night 
that seemed so very far away and yet was in 
reality so near. I thought of that last inter- 
view between the sisters. 

Mr. Dacre entered. 

I could not believe it possible that such a 
change could have taken place in so short a 
time. He came towards me with the bent 
form and hesitating step of great age. As he 
slowly approached, I could see how his cheeks 
had fallen, how sunken were his eyes. His 
very voice was different — no longer of rich, 
vigorous tone, but weak and quavering. 

“ Iduna,” he said, is she well ?” 

“ Yes,” I replied. 

She does not know ?” he continued. 

No.” 

‘‘ But she must.” 

In time she must. It might kill her now.” 

I have dared too much,” he said, wildly. 
“ This is my punishment. My faith in faith- 
lessness is gone. That indefinable Power 
that men in all ages have held in awe — in 
the fair deities of the ancient world, in the 


58 


IDUNA 


harsh tyrants of untutored savages, in the 
more perfect conceptions of a later time — 
that Power I have outraged. This — this is 
my retribution.” 

I caught him as he fell, and, placing him in 
a chair, I despatched a servant for the physi- 
cian. Mr. Dacre had fainted. As the re- 
storatives were applied I happened to glance 
through the window. The oppressive heat 
of the day was not lessened by a breeze, and 
I saw that dark, heavy clouds, glowing with 
a yellowish purple, were rising over the sea. 
It was the storm that had threatened through 
the day. The clouds came on with the swift- 
ness, the apparent intensity of purpose pecul- 
iar to the summer, and low, but deep, I could 
hear the mutter of the thunder. I thought 
of Iduna, but at that moment the physician 
called upon me to assist him. I felt the first 
hot, sickening gust of a newly awakened 
wind, and saw a blinding, brilliant flash of 
lightning. I could hear the stroke of the 
rising waves on the beach. A deep gloom 
overspread earth and sea. The big drops of 
the hastening rain began to fall. The light- 
ning was almost incessant ; the roar of the 
storm continuous. The wind blew a hurri- 


IDUNA 


59 


cane. The rain fell, it almost seemed, in a 
solid, steely mass. The tumult was inde- 
scribable. Remembering Iduna’s fear of the 
thunder, I longed to return to her, but stood 
for a moment irresolute, doubting if I should 
leave her father. 

Suddenly, together, there came a crash as 
if the world itself were shattered — a flash — 
a starting sinew on the arm of God. 

The bolt had struck the house. 

I stood appalled. I could hear the rush of 
the frightened servants through the halls, 
and then there was comparative stillness. 

What a shriek ! 

My heart seemed to stop beating. I started 
in the direction of the sound. Hastening on, 
I came to the room from which the cry pro- 
ceeded. I paused upon the threshold, stunned 
by what I saw. Iduna lay upon the dead body 
of her sister. In the excitement of the mo- 
ment, and abandoned by her attendants, in 
her terror of the storm, she had fled to seek 
her father, and — she was alone with death ! 

Hearing me approach, she looked quickly 
up. 

''Help me — help me!” she cried, agoniz- 
ingly. " What can have happened? I cannot 


6o 


IDUNA 


awaken her ; she is so white and cold and 
still. I am afraid of my sister. Alda! Alda!” 

Even in her terror it seemed she sought 
with multiplied kisses to give warmth, mo- 
tion to the inanimate body. 

I stood speechless. I could not tell her 
that her sister would never awake again. 
I could not then reveal this horror and 
mystery of the world. I could not tell 
her what it was. I could not tell her that 
this was death — awful in any form even to 
those who through life have anticipated its 
coming. 

“Can you do nothing?” she cried, in pitiful 
'anguish, as she looked up at me. 

“ Nothing.” 

“ Is it true ?” she exclaimed, while a strange, 
tremulous look, as if reason itself were shaken, 
came into her eyes. “ Is this the thing I 
feared?” She grasped my arm, and spoke 
almost in a whisper, “ Is this what I once 
dreamed — something that must come when 
we can neither move, nor breathe, nor speak? 
I thought,” she continued, her voice becoming 
hoarse, almost raspingly hoarse in horror, “ it 
was not true, and yet I dared not ask. Tell 
me,” she spoke so low that I could hardly 


IDUNA 


6i 


hear her, as she pointed to her sister, “ is this 
that word — death ?” 

I did not speak. 

“ It is true !” she shrieked, and, starting 
back, she fell to the floor. 

This strange story was told to me by an 
old friend whom I had not seen for a long 
time. He told it to me as we sat before the 
sinking fire in the last hours of a winter night. 
We had been at the great ball of the year, 
and he had come home with me. As he fin- 
ished, the flame flickered low, and I noticed 
that the gray light of morning was beginning 
to steal through the curtains. A white rose 
dropped from his button-hole and fell among 
the ashes of many cigars. 

“ Did she die?” 

No,” he answered, slowly and gently. 
“ Within eventless walls, where even the pres- 
ent time seems measureless, Iduna lives. She 
is one of a religious sisterhood. She seeks the 
immortality she once thought was hers.” 


i 



THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 



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THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


T T TELL, Alston, my occidental Croesus, 
V V there’s nothing like the meeting of 
old friends. It wakes up the sympathies, it 
checks the heart’s corrosion. But you — rust 
hasn’t touched that organ. How prosperity 
has agreed with you ! Me I — tartrate of acri- 
mony has been my medicine for many a day ; 
and what good has it done me?” 

Alston said nothing, but stood looking at 
the speaker. 

The two men leaned against the marble 
breastwork thrown irp in the hall of the 
great hotel that the clerks might not be over- 
run by invading hordes. Servants came and 
went, arriving and departing travellers jostled 
one another in their eagerness. Those who 
sought guests, and guests themselves, at- 
tacked the office with ceaseless and varied 
demands, some perhaps asking to see a po- 
tentate, others possibly desiring a postage- 
stamp. 

5 


66 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


It was a characteristic night in the thronged 
corridors and crowded rooms. Thousands — 
fortunes, perhaps — were made or lost in the 
quick utterance of short words. Hopes, am- 
bitions, found then and there happy issue or 
paralyzing defeat. A man, master of world- 
craft, might laugh with light or bitter sar- 
casm, as was his temperament or his mood, 
as he looked upon those who met and talked 
together, or who sat or stood separately 
around. He would know, for it was in the 
air, that the future even of a political party 
depended largely upon the action of a score 
or more of its managers gathered in the 
house that night. A half-dozen men, whose 
sleight of management was with as many 
counties, laughed at the turns of speech of 
another, who thought he manipulated a state, 
while they awaited the expected appearance 
of a man of national reputation who in- 
tended to “capture” all of them. A rumor 
flitted about, like a bat in a twilight room, 
that it was suspected by the knowing that 
before midnight a plan would reach its 
golden acme — a plan by which all the pro- 
ducers of one of the country’s great products 
would finally unite in a long- desired, long- 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


67 


unattainable “trust/’ the obdurate and recal- 
citrant manufacturer, without whose concur- 
rence all was impracticable, having finally 
yielded to the irrefragable logic of necessity. 
In the afternoon there had been one of the 
usual flurries in the “street.” Zenith and 
Nadir preferred had gone off three points, 
and brokers slid about with whisper, glance, 
and shrug, wondering whether a thrill of sym- 
pathetic depression would tingle along the 
stock of competing lines. Lawyers, editors, 
noted and powerful, were there; millionaires, 
arch-millionaires, whose wealth made them 
world-famous, were in the throng. Not only 
the city’s habitual dwellers were to be seen, 
but many parts of the country had sent 
worthy representatives to this chaotic con- 
gress. Silent and self-contained owners of 
plantations in Louisiana chatted with alert, 
restless men whose wealth lay in the dark 
and odorous forests of Maine. A mining 
expert from Colorado, panegyrizing the 
stock of a silver company risen, so to 
speak, from the lode that day, walked up 
and down between two rigorously dressed, 
smooth-shaven capitalists from Massachu- 
setts. Ranchmen from the prairies, almost 


68 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


awkwardly inert just then, and evidently the 
men they really could be only where there 
were scope and air and action, talked with prim 
and pragmatical business men from Manhat- 
tan’s “ Swamp.” Here and there a quiet pro- 
vincial, with unacknowledged longing for 
his home, gazed silently upon individuals, 
groups, the crowd, and wondered if he could 
really like what he thought he saw. Now a 
messenger boy hurried out ; now a telegraph 
boy, hastening in, handed a despatch over 
the counter — a despatch that might mean 
so very much, so very little. The incessant 
tramp — not breaking silence, but crushing it 
as if into atoms under foot — mingled with 
the unceasing grind, the suppressed roar, of 
the wheels in near and in distant streets. 

Alston’s inattention to all around grew 
even deeper. His companion stood gather- 
ing the ragged end of his moustache between 
his teeth, biting it vigorously. It was easy 
to see that, though apparently for the 
moment lost in thought, he was struggling 
towards some resolution. His eyes were 
fixed upon a large mirror that seemed to 
open up a vista of other lighted halls, filled 
with other clustering or hurrying men. Then 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 69 

the deep, shadowed lines in his face grew 
thinner, straighter, as if beneath sudden and 
stronger tension, and he turned towards 
Alston with at first an inarticulate sound, 
too unformed for an oath, too raucous for a 
laugh — still like either, but, above all, fit at 
once to arrest attention by its mocking tone 
of defiant propitiation. 

“I say, Alston, I want to celebrate your 
return. I want some money, I want — ” It 
was evident he was forcing his recklessness 
to a point where it might give way. “ I must 
do this occasion honor. I want to drink your 
health. I am particular about my drinks ; 
a man must be particular about something 
or he’ll lose his self-respect. I want to drink 
your health at one particular place — a place 
where they know me, perhaps not wisely, but 
certainly too well. But there’s nothing like 
a money difference to keep men apart. I’ve 
had their liquids and I haven’t liquidated. 
Lend me — ” 

Alston turned upon him with a look that 
was a peremptory stop, a sentinel’s challenge 
to one about setting foot on prohibited 
ground. The last speaker glanced furtively 
up, checked himself abruptly, and, with sud- 


70 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


den confusion, his forced effrontery came to 
a momentary end. Again he gathered his 
moustache between his teeth, gnawing it 
savagely, and brushed a particle of dust 
from the sleeve of his perfectly fitting coat. 
It was an obstinate particle; it required 
some embarrassing seconds for its removal, 
and then the eyes of the men met, but only 
in instantaneous encounter. They were 
young men, neither over thirty-five; Alston, 
perhaps from his heavier figure and broader 
shoulders, apparently the older of the two ; 
both evidently in the full vigor of manhood ; 
both men with every aspect full of that in- 
describable significance that belongs only to 
one who has had something far more than 
the usual life, who has undergone much and 
lived all through it, without the weakening 
of a muscle or the lessening of a faculty. 
For a moment Alston stood silently look- 
ing at his companion — looking at him with 
the questioning, long -practised look with 
which experience so quickly sums up, so 
to speak, the human column that stands be- 
fore it. 

“Trego,” he said — and there was con. 
tempt, wonder, pity, perhaps a touch of tri- 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


71 


umph even, in that one word — ‘‘Trego, come 
up to my room. I want to talk to you.” 

Alston turned without waiting for reply, 
and moved towards the main stairway. Trego, 
not in reluctance, but only instinctively, paus- 
ing that he might the better gather into com- 
prehensible compass all that the unexpected 
meeting, the strangely different fortunes of 
the two, the past, and the outlook for the 
future brought in mingled confusion to his 
half-consciousness, stood motionless for an 
instant, and then with hurried step caught 
up with Alston, already half-way across the 
hall, and slipped his hand familiarly over his 
arm. 

“Ah, Alston,” he said, “there’s nothing 
like having been boys together.” 

Alston half drew away. 

Without another word they mounted the 
marble stairs. 

“They seem to know you,” said Trego, in 
a tone of jarring, significant jocularity, pain- 
ful to Alston’s ear, as they entered the room. 
“ They’ve lodged you well. I don’t believe 
they missed a single million when they took 
your measure for these rooms. I see the 
railroad president in the heavy hangings. 


72 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


I tread on traces of a dozen directorships in 
big corporations when I walk on these car- 
pets. There is not even a chair in which 
I cannot detect the essential rich man. 
Everywhere I see that devil-on-two-sticks, 
the dollar-mark.” 

It was merely the main room of a suite of 
apartments in the huge hotel reserved for 
guests distinguished worthily, or perhaps 
sometimes unworthily, from their kind — a 
room not like so many where provision for 
comfort is so apparent as to make all uncom- 
fortable; where colors are in confusion with- 
out blending tone; splendor in its new 
clothes; a strike, a riot of upholstery, which 
even assuaging shadows cannot quell. Never- 
theless, it was a place to which no human 
creature could ever be bound by the gradu- 
ally tightening bonds of daily association — a 
place which retained no more personal im- 
press from any of the hundreds that it had 
harbored than its mirrors had retained trace 
of the changing forms they had reflected. 

Alston turned up the gas already lighted, 
and threw himself with decisive action into 
one of the large arm-chairs. 

“Sit down, Trego,” he almost commanded. 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


73 


pointing to another. “Sit down ; I’ve some- 
thing to say to you.” 

Trego had really lost nothing of the de- 
fiant assurance that had for a moment appar- 
ently deserted him, an assurance evidently 
the result of exertion so painful that his 
assumed airiness of language and ease of 
manner were almost ghastly in their unnatu- 
ralness — ghastly as is the flutter, the invol- 
untary twitch, following sudden animal death. 

Silently, and a little sullenly, he took the 
seat to which Alston pointed. 

“I didn’t think,” said Alston, “that you 
had come to this.” 

“Nor have I,” answered Trego, instantly. 
“ It’s all come to me. I might say that I 
haven’t come to anything. It would be the 
strict truth.” 

“ No jesting,” said Alston, sternly. “I’ve 
a reason for asking. How do you live?” 

“ I might tell you it was none of your 
business,” answered the other. “ But I 
don’t. It’s seldom I can afford such luxury. 
You might feel insulted. I live on my wits. 
They don’t quote such stock in the market, 
but it pays nevertheless — pays something. 
But there’s another kind that pays better, 


74 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


it’s SO weak and well watered — the witless- 
ness of others.” 

“You are telling me the truth?” said 
Alston, half rising. 

“Sit down,” said Trego. “Truth is an- 
other delicacy I can’t afford, but to-night I 
feel extravagant. I waste my substance on 
a returning friend.” 

Alston drew his chair slightly nearer the 
speaker. 

“To be fair with myself,” Trego began, 
“I am not generally as low as this. It’s 
neap tide with me, and my life shows the 
slime and the ooze and the crawling things. 
I’ve a most irregularly regular occupation, a 
most unlearned profession, requiring a man 
to know everything. I am ” — and then 
some humorous recollection or some gro- 
tesque turn of thought gave the first real 
ring of merriment to his voice — “I am an 
empirical philosopher; peripatetic, and with 
such places as these for my groves, my por- 
ticos. I am a psychological expert. I pro- 
fess human nature in all its branches. I am 
about to issue abusiness card : ‘ William Trego, 
Guide, Philosopher, and Friend. Address, 
care of the Devil, No. i. The Broad Road.’” 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


75 


“Trego,” interrupted Alston, with per- 
emptory impatience, “what do you do?” 

“Practise a liberal art — liberal if it only 
paid better.” 

He glanced quickly at Alston before he 
resumed. 

“As fortune failed,” he went on — “and it 
soon did — I felt I must be practical. I de- 
voted myself to the study of that sufficiently 
unnatural branch of natural history — human- 
ity. Perplexing, isn’t it, there’s so much of 
human nature in man, so little of the man in 
human nature ? I found myself hard pressed. 
Something r.iust be done. I had read or 
thought — perhaps I thought it — that if a man 
could supply one of the ordinary needs of 
mankind in a more satisfactory way than did 
any other, he might be assured of fortune. 
What could I do? Supplying appetites was 
overworked; very accommodating millions 
were quite busy doing a good many things 
about people’s necessities. Really, I didn’t 
want to disturb so many worthy persons by 
setting up the same kind of shop. Were 
there any other demands? Curiosity and 
vanity, untiring, insatiate. Here were un- 
bounded wants. Could I bring to market 


76 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


delicacies, in season or out, never before 
offered? The press had partly anticipated 
me, but there was much to which that alto- 
gether lovely thing, ‘personal journalism,’ 
had not given type. I could beat the news- 
papers, I thought, and I have done it. I am 
ringmaster in the world’s great though single- 
ringed circus of performing animals.” 

The sudden light of merriment that had 
danced before each sentence as he went on 
sank as sinks .the will-o’-the-wisp, as he 
stopped for a moment, abandoning his face 
to an expression as lack-lustre and repel- 
ling as before. The smile stiffened and his 
lips tightened in his usual expression of light 
scornfulness. 

‘‘What do you mean?” said Alston, exas- 
perated by what seemed to him a display of 
extravagant nonsense. 

“Mean?” said Trego, the underlying bit- 
terness edging every word with spiteful tone. 
“I’ll tell you what I mean. Suppose your- 
self some mere ravelling from civilization’s 
untrimmed edge, some sober thread pulled 
from the warp or woof of provincial life; sup- 
pose yourself one of human nature’s tolerably 
well-meaning creatures, alone in this consid- 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


77 


erable city, anxious to see the world, with- 
out insurmountable objection to the flesh, 
and not so terribly averse to that gentleman 
whose reputation improves every day — the 
devil. Would it satisfy you to see parks, 
buildings, libraries, galleries? Wouldn’t it 
depreciate you with yourself a little that 5'’ou 
didn’t see more, where you knew there was 
so much more to be seen? Of course it 
would. You would rather lounge at the 
side-scenes than sit with the audience. To 
know a city is more than to know a science 
or another language than your own, and it 
takes much more time. I know this city. 
I give gentlemen seeking knowledge the 
benefit of what I know — for a consideration. 
I am a Mentor in a moustache to any Te- 
lemachus, white-bearded or otherwise. You 
jostle against a man in the street, and, if it 
were not for me, you would not know that 
he bore a name that is a household word. I 
point out the man of awe-inspiring millions ; 
the politician, who drops, on sight, from his 
apotheosis ; the great actor, on the pavement 
so very unlike himself as he walked down 
the stage last night ; the gentleman who 
drives a successful trade in parts of speech. 


78 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 

English warranted to go, and who sells his 
phrases to be put in print; the quite aberrant 
man, astray from the commands of the dec- 
alogue, the prohibitions of the statutes, who 
might be in prison if others did not fear to 
go there too; notorieties; celebrities; wor- 
thies and unworthies; philanthropists; crim- 
inals ; mezzo-malefactors, gay enough to 
catch the public eye — I show them all, all 
the performers in my raree-show, performers 
who furnish their own wardrobes and support 
themselves, playing among properties cer- 
tainly not mine, every one a star. I am ready 
to meet all requirements. I furnish gratifica- 
tion for the moment, and I do more — I sup- 
ply a lasting pleasure. I enable my patrons 
to make their neighbors and friends miser- 
able, as they recount, in rural quiet, adven- 
tures such as have never come within such 
simple experience. Would you like,” he 
added, mockingly, “to see what there is in 
town, Mr. Alston?” 

“Trego,” said the other, severely, “are you 
telling me the truth?” 

“Truth, not the whole truth, but some- 
thing very like the truth,” answered Trego, 
in the tone of one administering an oath. 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


79 


‘‘You mean that you are — ” 

“I mean nothing,” said Trego, suddenly 
and almost fiercely starting into assumed 
dignity. “ But if you think I am more in a 
mood for jesting than you are, Harry Alston, 
you are mistaken. You mistake ” — and for an 
instant he remembered himself, but at once 
was lost again in the rattling, gibing tone — 
“ the sound of the fool’s-cap bells. If you 
think it was an easy thing, a bearable thing, 
for me, remembering what I was, to ask you, 
remembering what you were and recognizing 
what you are, to lend me money, you think me 
worse than I think myself. Your plummet 
sounds — swings in an abyss deeper, wider, 
darker than any to which I have sunk.” 

“ Why, then, did you attempt it?” 

“ I am talking to-night as I never expected 
to talk again. I’ll tell you even that. I did 
it — strange, isn’t it? — from self-respect.” 

“ From self-respect T‘ 

“ Those who have always held the straight 
way know but little of the tricks perverted 
nature plays us in the crooked. Had I, at 
the sight of you, found myself so far re- 
moved from what I thought myself as to 
forego an act to which I supposed I had 


8o 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


been long since hardened, I should have been 
shaken in that strength of stolid indifference, 
cultivated and at last attained, which has 
become my best protection from shame and 
remorse. It is as unsettling to skilled, con- 
sistent, useful depravity to admit a good 
impulse as for an honest man to yield to a 
bad one.” 

“ And you have done a shameful thing to 
prove to yourself that you were strong 
enough — or weak enough — to act as if wholly 
lost to shame.” 

“ Yes.” 

As he answered he looked up defiantly, 
and his almost convulsive grasp, tightening 
on the arm of his chair, was all that showed 
consciousness of his situation. 

There was silence for a minute, broken 
only by Alston’s scarcely audible step on the 
thick carpet. 

Trego,” said Alston at last, “ I will be 
even more frank than you. I shall speak of 
much that you know; but when I have said 
what I shall say, you will understand why 
I have said it.” 

Trego silently bowed. 

Boyhood,” continued Alston, is no time 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


8i 


for friendship ; companionship is all it really 
knows. We were companions — nothing 
more, nothing less ; but as we grew older — 
let me be frank — as each gathered to him- 
self those many things that made character 
what it is, we did not like each other. It 
was hardly hatred, possibly only instinctive 
aversion arising from the repugnance of in- 
congruous, irreconcilable dissimilarity ; a feel- 
ing, however, at last given intensity by that 
hostile instinct that comes to all male things 
at such time as came to us when you were 
to marry Mary Hayden.” 

Again Trego bowed his head ; now, how- 
ever, with more emphatic assent. 

“ But I will go back a little,” Alston went 
on. ^‘You remember Class Day. It is a 
day when in sudden kindliness men say 
things that sometimes they do not and some- 
times will not remember. If ever there was 
a time to stand by every inference even a 
friend might then draw, it is now.” 

“You are generous,” said Trego. 

“ I am not. We did not think then who 
would give or take. We will not now. Per- 
haps you can give me much — more per- 
haps than I can give you.” 

6 


82 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


ti j ’» 

“ Do not speak. I barely got my degree ; 
they gave you honors — whether you de- 
served them or not doesn’t matter now. 
Then trouble came to me — ruin they called 
it — the consequence of squandered time, of 
qualities, merits perhaps if only differently 
directed. You may have gloried in my fail- 
ure — I do not know. I, if it had been oth- 
erwise, might have gloried in yours — I do 
not know. I was disgraced, and then, when 
all thought me lost — then there came to me 
that weakness that was my only strength. 
I dared not ask Mary Hayden to marry me 
— I — but you — then I must have hated you 
—you, rich, unassailably respectable, skilful 
in the pretty, petty ways of what is called 
society, easily master of that indescribable 
grace of manner and flexibility of speech 
that, more than wealth or reputation or 
personal attractiveness, win their way with 
women ; you plying light arts in piqued per- 
sistence ; affecting humility, yet stealing an 
upward look to see whether the affectation 
would not give you vantage enough to 
push a ready, careful foot another line’s 
breadth in approach — you — you murmured 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE S3 

and laughed, and at last, filling a presence 
into which I was too little or too much of 
a man to step, you won. I hated you then, 
Trego, and in such a nature as mine I do 
not believe such hatred wholly dies out. 
But I will help you if — if — in such act I can 
repay in smallest fraction anything of what 
I owe — to another.” 

Alston paused, as if hoping that Trego 
might say something, but the other sat silent. 
With slow, firm step Alston approached him, 
and for a moment stood silent himself be- 
fore the silent man. 

“If you knew how I loved her,” he con- 
tinued, “ you might not listen to me. I 
loved her as a strong man, not yet wholly 
lost, loves the marvel of earth, a good 
woman ; loved her as a man almost lost, a 
man not unfamiliar with evil, can love the 
woman who represents to him all that there 
is of good — for dull inexperience can never 
have true appreciation of the full beauty of 
such pure, high, gracious rectitude. I heard 
of your engagement. Calamity — her loss — 
neither sunk me in despair nor roused me 
into anger. All only braced me — it seemed 
strange to me then, it seems stranger to me 


84 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


now — with strength concentrated in vigorous 
capability ; every faculty, all that I was, was 
bent towards the attainment of that wealth 
and power that best attest success to the 
world.” 

Alston paused for an instant. 

“ I have lived a dozen lives in the last ten 
years,” he resumed. “A man finds easy field 
for it beyond the Mississippi. I have known 
mere manual toil — months, years of it — in 
the very midst of all that was squalid, vi- 
cious, vile. I have lived years when I gave 
up every minute, every power, to that unre- 
mitting labor absolutely necessary to the 
seizure of opportunity, to the control of cir- 
cumstances, the mastery of men. Courage, 
firmness, continued endeavor, strength in its 
fulness, and more, are necessary to win all 
that I have won in the last ten years. But 
I feel no touch of vanity. I know too well 
what we all are, and how weak the strongest 
is. I know that even with such strength as 
mine, unaided, I should perhaps have attained 
little. Mere integrity, industry, intensity of 
purpose, would not have been enough for 
me ; for men are busy, and expediency, im- 
patience in accomplishment, many things. 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


85 


hasten or persuade men into doing what they 
otherwise might not have done. But if ever 
there is present one noble idea, if there stands 
before the mind’s eye a personality, living, 
breathing, of humankind, though seemingly 
above it, whose every thought, whose whole 
being is purest, best — yes, and most beauti- 
ful ; and if such personality is loved, wor- 
shipped — loved, Trego — resent it, if you 
dare, for I speak of your wife — then comes 
knowledge of the reality, the power of all 
things good ; then for him who so loves 
there is a rule ever present, ever strong to 
control evil, to restrain passion, quick to 
mould and direct character, acts, career. So 
my ten years of life have been shaped. The 
cunning of a doctrine, the stress of a moral- 
ist, the dogmatism of a creed, would have 
been to me as nothing. I was subdued, 
governed by the idea of one beautiful life. 
It is the serene life lived nearly two thousand 
years ago that to-day gives our religion pre- 
vailing actuality — the serene life of the sad 
Man without laughter. I hold but the half- 
fearful, half-hopeful credence of so many in 
these days. But there is one devotion that 
always has had, always will have, strong 


86 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


appeal to my better self — the worship of the 
Madonna. With an awe that would soften 
to tenderness if reverence did not restrain, I 
found my shrine, I worshipped my Madonna. 
I regulated my life by what I supposed, had 
she known my acts and all that surrounded 
them, Mary Hayden would have thought 
worthy of a man true to himself. I found 
an absolutely adequate and unfailing rule of 
conduct. I submitted every plan, every 
proposed act, to this test — would she ap- 
prove if she knew all ? And more, would I 
shrink from telling her ? There was my 
safety. The thought that I might so shrink 
aroused alarm ; some baseness must lurk 
somewhere. It was enough. I did nothing 
that I would not gladly have told her had I 
been permitted to seek her guidance — a guid- 
ance that I do not believe, Trego, you have 
followed.” 

Trego started. 

“ See here, Alston,” he exclaimed, ‘‘ have 
you — how much do you believe a man will — 
can bear?” 

“ Sit still and hear me out,” said Alston. 
“This simple rule,” he continued, “this sim- 
ple method — this, more than what I was, has 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


87 


made me what I am, master of circumstance 
and of myself ; has given me all that I pos- 
sess — wealth, power, the confidence of men. 
It is as unfailing now when — I am at- 
tempting to do mere justice to her, not 
flattering myself — when I am the first man 
in my State — as when all that I had to resist 
was the push of an appetite, or the persua- 
sion of the chance of small gain. No mat- 
ter how complicated the circumstances, my 
rule never fails me. Motives are dexterous 
in specious pretences, but what would she 
say — she, who, not knowing all that men 
know, would yet know infinitely more? All 
else has been nothing, and is nothing, com- 
pared with the thought of her. That thought 
has been my strength, my test, my restraint, 
my impulsion. It is the vital point around 
which my life gathers — the nucleus of what 
otherwise would be unsustained, unformed, 
empty. Life without this reality would be 
objectless, scattered, void. Trego, under- 
stand me. I did not expect to know any- 
thing so soon. That I would have sought 
information of her and of you before I re- 
turned is true. Our meeting here to-night 
is, of course, purely accidental. Had I found 


88 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


you holding the place the world expected 
of you — that she expected of you — I would 
have said nothing. I would have gone, and 
neither of you would have seen me. But I 
have not found you occupying such position. 
I find you resorting to an expedient, to say 
the least of it, questionable, even if neces- 
sary to the earning of your livelihood. I ask 
you — and, remembering what Mary Hayden 
has unconsciously done for me, I have the 
right of a more than grateful man to ask it 
— what have you done for her? Has she 
suffered? has she been in want? does she 
suffer? is she in want now? Have you been 
as false to the promises that you made to 
her as you have to the promises you gave 
the world ?” 

“ Had any other man spoken as you 
speak,’' said Trego, hoarsely, ‘‘he would suf- 
fer for it.” 

“ Not if he spoke as I speak,” answered 
Alston quietly, almost solemnly. “ Not if 
he spoke with such a motive as mine. There 
is no remedy for the past. We can mend 
the present. We must assure the future. 
We cannot do that properly if every word 
is not the plain, severe truth. What would 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 8g 

Mary Hayden say that I should do now if 
she knew all?” 

Trego did not answer. 

Both had been silent for some minutes 
when there came a rap at the door. Neither 
gave it attention, and Alston continued his 
walk. 

The knock was repeated. 

“ There is some one at the door,” said Trego. 

“ Come in,” commanded Alston. 

A servant entered with a card. 

“ I must see him,” said Alston, after he 
had taken it and glanced at the name it 
bore. “ He is here in answer to my despatch. 
I will be gone but for a moment. Wait 
here ; I will meet him in the next room.” 

He drew a heavily wrought portiere aside 
and passed through the doorway. 

Trego did not leave his chair. He glanced 
at Alston as he disappeared; then, after a 
moment of irresolution, he drew a letter from 
his pocket and spread it out upon his knee, 
carefully smoothing down its creases and 
turning back its crumpled edges. 

He nervously glanced about the room as 
if he were fearful that some one might see 
what it contained. 


90 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


“ If I were the man he thinks I am — if I 
were the man I thought myself — I would do 
it,” he muttered. “I could shake the foun- 
dation of his self-satisfied assurance. I 
could make him feel something of what I 
have suffered. Hates me, does he? I hate 
him. Why? How has he hurt me? As 
success always hurts him who has failed. 
Because he can — dare — offer me aid. But — 
shall I do him this harm ? Shall I deprive 
him of that, in losing which he says he 
would lose all ? Rich as he is, shall I make 
him poorer than I am ? Shall I rob him of 
his illusion — of his reality ? Because the 
coin is counterfeit, shall I take it from him ? 
And still, he hates me, and I — ” 

Bending low and with difficulty making 
out the faint and blotted lines scrawled on 
the coarse paper, without date or intimation 
of place, he read : 

“Dear Billy, — When in my first love-letter I 
so wrote your name it was with something of the 
timidity with which I write it now, and yet how 
different the feeling ! Then I wrote with joyous 
satisfaction, with shrinking, girlish glee; now I 
write in shame, and now I am afraid. I did not 
think then that, as a broken-hearted woman, borne 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


91 


down with the sense of all that she has done, I should 
write to you, unworthy of forgiveness as I am, and 
only daring to use that name that I may ask you 
to remember what I once was to you: — what I once 
really was. I cannot live long, Billy, they tell me, 
and it is really all that I can do to write this letter. 
I may die to-night, and I may live longer, and with 
something of my old strength ; but the time will 
soon come when all that will be left of Mary Hayden 
will be a bitter memory in the mind of the man 
she loved with all the strength of which she was 
ever capable. For I have always loved you, Billy, 
in my way. All the time that I clogged your every 
effort, all the time I slowly but surely dragged you 
down, I loved you — always in my way — slight, 
perhaps, but still outlasting everything else. At the 
very last I loved you, strange as it may seem and 
hard as it is to be believed. WhatJ did was through 
flattered vanity and the need, fierce as an opium 
eater’s, for things — trifles, yet so much to me — 
which with only our narrowing means I could not 
have. But I did so like pretty things, gayety, joy, 
abundance of bright life. Even the night when I 
went away, unnatural as it may seem, I remember 
thinking how much nicer it would be if you were 
going with us. It is absurd to have thought it at 
such a time, but I wanted you to go too — I really 
did. I was not bad, Billy, I was not. I never could 
quite see, feel, things as others did ; I believe I never 
had what they call a moral sense. But I am not 
attempting a vindication. I only v/ish before I die 


92 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


to tell you the truth, to tell you the remorse I feel 
for what I have done to you. I have ruined you, 
and I know it. You would have been a good man, 
perhaps a great man, if it had not been for me. 

“ Everybody I once knew, for whom I cared, thinks 
me dead — every one but you. It was the least I 
could do, after leaving you, to help you in the de- 
ception. And it is the bitter truth that I am dead. 
Every hope, every joy that belonged to Mary Hay- 
den has passed away. I am not what I was — a 
woman yet to suffer, but dead to you, and dead to 
all once so very pleasant, so very dear. And I do 
not tell you what I suffer. I believe even now it 
would give you pain could you know, and I am 
silent. If the girl you married could cling to your 
heart one moment — sin and suffering have left her 
a woman even yet, and she would not hurt the 
man she loved — agony could not wring from her 
even one murmur. It may come, for you have not 
succeeded in the world, and suffering explains so 
much, softens so much, teaches us to pardon so 
much : it may come — some moment of tenderness 
at thought of some little thing ; not when our lips 
met, for such thoughts madden, but of some time 
when my hand just touched your arm and I laughed 
up in your face, happy in mocking caprice — some 
moment of tenderness when you might even wish 
to see me. But do not seek to do it. I long, but I 
could not bear it, Billy. Could you ? And I will 
not tell you where I am. 

“ I am dead ; and if, as some say, remorse is the 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


93 


punishment that awaits our sins hereafter, I am al- 
ready in hell. I know the anguish of ineffectual 
repentance. My guilt stands out in all its naked 
hideousness, without any of the palliations with 
which I once clothed it, and I recognize the evil I 
have always been. Do you think that He will 
punish us that way? He knows we are women and 
how weak we are. Is it just that the weak should 
suffer most ? If it were so, annihilation were far 
kinder than a merciful Father. If we sin, how much 
are w^e overtempted, how weak to withstand temp- 
tation ! I know that He will be kind to us. One 
of us was the mother of the Child. 

“ I can hardly write any more. Why I have writ- 
ten at all, I have told you. I am sorry. That is all I 
can say. If you can feel more kindly towards me be- 
cause I feel so kindly towards you — she who I was 
would say so much more than this — I would be 
glad. But do not seek to have me know it. I shall 
soon be where, if it be possible to know anything. I 
shall know all, and if one does not, then it does not 
matter. 

“ Good-bye, Billy. I owe you the happiest and 
best days of my life, and, weak creature that I was, 
you held me for a long time above myself. I should 
like to feel that this poor letter even for one moment 
has softened you towards me, and so made some 
one better — better through me, who have made so 
many worse. Good-bye. I am sorry. Good-bye. 

‘•Mary.” 


94 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


He ceased reading and sat resting his head 
upon his hand, gathering the skin of his fore- 
head between his fingers, as is the habit of 
some men when lost in thought. 

“ I can’t do it,” he muttered, hoarsely. 
“I would not darken her heaven; I would 
not add one agony to her hell. It might 
be justification of myself, revenge upon 
him, but — I cannot show him that letter.” 
He paused, then quickly continued : “ Per- 

haps there is some good left in me, after 
all.” 

He was so absorbed that he did not notice 
when Alston entered the room. He said 
nothing to him, even when he had crossed 
the floor and stood silently before him. 

“ I am waiting for your answer,” said Al- 
ston. 

“ Wait,” he replied, roughly. 

He rose, went to the window and looked 
out. The evening was well advanced, but 
the crowds from the theatres, soon to fill the 
walks, had not yet appeared. The Square 
and the converging streets were dismal, 
almost slimy, repulsive, shining as they were 
from the just fallen rain. The sharp shadows 
made by the electric lights, heavy and dis- 


THE -WOMAN IN THE CASE 


95 


tinct as the border of a mourning - card, 
seemed to edge everything — to harden what 
he saw into greater and more impressive se- 
verity. 

“ What have you to say ?” demanded Alston. 

“ Nothing,” replied Trego. 

Then he turned, faced Alston for a mo- 
ment, and added: 

“ She died five years ago.” 

Alston stood rigidly erect. 

“Died!” he said; “died — and yet it is 
better so. But stand there — she is no man’s 
now. I, too, have my rights. Tell me, did 
she die before — did she know — ” 

“ What I am?” said Trego, fiercely. “ Drop 
that. You had better.” 

“ I will know the truth.” 

“ I swear, Henry Alston,” said Trego, in a 
tone that dispelled all doubt — “ I swear that 
she suffered nothing from me. I swear it 
to you by all that there is left to me to hold 
sacred.” 

“And I believe you,” answered Alston; 
“ and it is well that I do. If I did not, I 
would shoot you down where you stand.” 

“ Possibly,” said Trego, with harsh, rattling, 
enigmatical laugh. 


96 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


He rose and moved towards the table in 
the centre of the room. 

“Will you allow me?” he added. “A 
lady’s letter. I must see that it reaches no 
other hands.” 

He held the paper to the gaslight, and the 
two men stood watching the eager flame 
snatch at it ; watched the play of the yellow 
blaze, saw the blackening, writhing edges as 
the paper burned, saw the light ashes fall 
and pass from sight — watched, and said 
nothing. Would either have spoken had 
either thought how typical it was of a lost 
life? 

-x- * * 

The rain had stopped some time before, 
but the air seemed still heavy with moisture. 
A thin fog had come up suddenly, and the 
electric lights shone only in dull, overspread- 
ing glow. As the two men stepped upon 
the walk, the crowd from the theatre close at 
hand had just begun to break upon the street. 

“ I could not stay inside,” said Alston. 
“ There’s a life in every breath of air.” 

Trego said nothing. 

“ I am going back to-morrow,” continued 
Alston. 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


97 


“Yes,” replied Trego, absently. 

Both men spoke as if there were but little 
left for which they might care. They seemed 
bewildered, lost, as if chaos had suddenly 
turned to blank space — vacancy without 
confine. 

They walked in silence up the Avenue. 

Then suddenly there came, dull and yet 
distinct, that ominous sound that means so 
much to the dwellers in cities — to every one 
who knows what it is — the rush, the clang, 
the nearing, passing, departing something 
that brings to mind dark thoughts of dis- 
ease, of casualty, of crime, of the long, silent 
suffering of the sick-bed, of the mutilation 
of sudden accident, of the direful wrongs 
man dares do to man ; a sound that brings 
to mind thoughts of the hospital, the knife, 
the grave. No man loiters so carelessly 
that he will not turn in sudden gravity 
when he hears it ; none is so busy that he 
will not pause as it comes to his ear — 
a throbbing, dominating sound, heard now 
above the rattle of glittering equipages 
giving way before it, and now, at midnight, 
lessening down the distance of some deserted 
street. 


98 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 

Alston scarcely noticed the ambulance as 
it approached. 

People farther along were gathered about 
the edge of the sidewalk, and Trego has- 
tened on alone. 

A woman lay upon the pavement, her 
head resting upon the curb-stone as upon 
a pillow. 

With quick, sharp exclamation he started 
back. The gathering whiteness, the tight- 
ening rigidity of his countenance, could be 
plainly seen beneath the hard, brutal glare of 
the electric light. He fell upon his knees, 
and, drawing a handkerchief from his pocket, 
dropped it over her upturned face. 

The ambulance stopped. The young 
physician who came with it sprang out and 
made a hurried examination, utterly disre- 
garding the kneeling man ; but in a minute 
he instinctively turned ^to him with signifi- 
cant gesture. 

“ She is dead?'’ asked Trego. 

The young man bowed his head, and with 
that instantaneous something that, when 
occasion comes, tells any man whither to 
turn for aid, he said : 

“ Will you help me ?” 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


99 


Trego staggered to his feet, and together 
they placed the lifeless body within the 
terrible shelter of the injured and the dead. 

The bell struck the silence as with sud- 
den blow; the horse leaped beneath the 
lash ; the wheels rattled on the pavement, 
and the ambulance vanished down the 
Avenue as might some quick and ghastly 
vision of the night. 

What is it ?” asked Alston, as he came 
up to Trego, who stood silent in the thin- 
ning crowd. 

He did not answer. 

“ What is it ?” repeated Alston, taking 
Trego by the arm. 

Trego started. 

“ The end of a tragedy,” he answered, 
steadily, rigidly. 

Then, after a moment, he added, abrupt- 
ly: 

“ Let me have some money. I haven’t a 
dollar. I must have money to-night. I’ll 
need it to-morrow. It is the only way I 
can get it, and I must have it. Let me 
have some money. Do you hear me? 
Money ! I will repay it ; you may be sure 
of that.” 


lOO 


THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 


Would she say that I should if she 
knew?” asked Alston. 

“Yes,” answered Trego, more quietly — “if 
she knew all that you have told me to- 
night.” 


PAPOOSE 


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PAPOOSE 



T four o’clock the scant winter sun- 


light filtered but dimly through the 
heavy, low-lying clouds, the smoke-thicken- 
ed air, and the quick-whirling snow-flakes. 
Down in the narrow city street, where the 
vans and carts and cabs seemed almost to 
flow with and be borne along by a stream of 
liquid mud that hid the pavement — a noisy 
debacle tearing down this ragged, urban 
gully, like a raft with loosened withes rush- 
ing and tumbling through a flume — the light 
was gray and grisly. Above and through the 
grimy, cobwebbed windows of a large room, 
just beneath the eaves of one of the large 
buildings lining the cramped thoroughfare, 
it seemed to lose its character as light, and 
to be sifted and to fall as might dull, sodden 
sand through a sieve. It was a very poor 
place. There were no curtains on the win- 
dows ; the floor was bare. In one corner 


104 


PAPOOSE 


stood a small, square stove ; no comforting 
fire in its barren grate ; no welcoming light 
between its gray bars ; its name, The Fire- 
side," appearing in raised, rusty letters across 
its front, a grim sarcasm, a sort of iron irony. 
The rust-scaled pipe ran low at first along 
the wall, then rose to and through a tin-filled 
square of a window-sash, as if it were the 
writhing, sharp -jointed, evil genius of. the 
forbidding place. In another corner was a 
long, low, ragged divan, and near it doddered 
a decrepit chair, with one arm uplifted, 
threatening away all approach. But the 
room was not without things not wholly ac- 
cordant. Upon the walls, in plain, pale hard- 
wood frames, hung crookedly an autotype 
of the angel’s head in Botticelli's “Spring," 
and a reproduction of Diirer’s “ Melancholia." 
A large chair, covered with rich but well- 
worn stuff, stood in front of the grim stove, 
and in a doorway leading to an adjoining 
room hung from a broken rod a heavy por- 
tiere of embroidered silk. A bookcase of 
elaborately carved oak rose above the lead- 
colored wainscot, its two upper shelves 
empty, its three lower only partially filled. 
There was something about its aspect that 


PAPOOSE 


105 


made it plain to the minds even of those 
who least understand the untold that, not 
very long before, the empty shelves had 
been filled ; that the volumes now left 
were not then deserted by those most sal- 
able of them all. On its top, at one end, 
rose a small bronze — Martha and Mephisto 
— evidently at loss for an object of the 
sympathy of the one and the sneer and 
jeer of the other, for none could be so with- 
out the eyes that see the unseen as not to 
see that a Faust and Marguerite, creatures 
of the same metal, were but lately gone from 
the opposite side. Between the divan and 
the stove lay a fine Persian rug with a stain 
in one corner and a hole in the other ; and 
on a stand in the angle nearest the door was 
quite an array of cups and plates and jars, 
some of them beautiful and costly, no two 
of them, however, of the same kind and pat- 
tern, and all looking like fine folk out of 
place and out of luck ; these and other 
things evidently appertaining to a better life 
than was possible in such quarters. There 
was scarcely an air of squalor about the room, 
but it was gray in its dusty ceiling, worn 
as to its broken paper-hanging, neglected. 


io6 


PAPOOSE 


and in its aspect and influence very melan- 
choly. 

On one of the rickety chairs, and at an 
unpainted table, its broad top spotted with 
ink stains, sat a man, his elbows resting on 
its edge, and his face covered by his hands. 
He had held this attitude for some time. 
The small cheap clock on the bookcase — 
Mephisto used to grimace over it at Faust — 
its clear ticking unnaturally strong for a 
thing so small, as unnaturally loud as is the 
harsh, stridulous piping of some persistent 
little demagogue in the commonwealth of 
some tree upon a hot summer’s night — the 
busy little clock had tallied off the minutes 
of half an hour since he had stirred. Now, 
as he raised his head, he saw through the 
window before him how dull and metallic, 
how like worn and blackened tin, the light, 
if light it might be called, of the closing day 
had become. Rising, he stood for a mo- 
ment, with one hand upon the table, evi- 
dently irresolute ; then he walked backward 
and forward half a dozen times, the length 
of the room. His step was sometimes firm, 
but now and then he seemed to falter in his 
walk. As if something of the power of voli- 


PAPOOSE 


107 


tion were lost, he would almost stop for a 
second with slight, spasmodic, purposeless 
gestures. It was patent in his most expres- 
sive face, even in that light, that he was 
with quick change tossed to and fro, from 
resolution to weakness, from weakness to 
resolution, ungoverned really by self -con- 
trolling power. One might almost fancy 
that the now strained and now relaxed lines 
in his face were as the sinews of the thoughts 
that struggled, staggered, went down, arose, 
and went on in the contest then at its height 
in his mind. 

As abruptly as he had risen, and as if at 
last in absolute determination, he sat down, 
and, drawing a few sheets of paper scattered 
on the table towards him, he took up a pen 
and wrote, hastily : 

As you are the only one who has any 
right to expect an explanation, or to whom I 
have the slightest desire to attempt justifica- 
tion of what I am about to do, I write to you.” 

He paused, and again glanced up at the 
window ; the light — for the clouds now in 
places seemed worn and frayed — was a little 
stronger, but still it was more like some 


io8 


PAPOOSE 


sickly phosphorescence than the deadened 
but healthy glow of the ruddy sun. Then 
he wrote hurriedly on: 

“ I do not know that I can justify either 
myself or my act. The taking of a crim- 
inal’s forfeited life is defensible; the taking 
of the life of him who attacks your own may 
be vindicated. If my life has wronged me, 
deceived me, threatened me, may I not take 
it, when it is mine? 

“ The instinct of most men, finding them- 
selves where I find myself, is mere cowardli- 
ness, and through such instinct they degrade 
duties and responsibilities into safeguards, 
and lurk behind them in excuse for their 
weakness. Men fear pain as do children 
ready with their outcry ; fear death as chil- 
dren shudder at the thought of a darkened 
room. They affect endurance in mock 
heroism, and sneer at suicide because they 
are afraid. I do not shrink from pain — 
the crash of the marring bullet through the 
flesh and bone will be but for a moment. I 
do not fear the darkness — generally the hab- 
itation of peace ; I rather seek it — seek the 
content of oblivion. I believe in the subtle 


PAPOOSE 


log 


delight of eternal unconsciousness, in the still 
blissfulness of restful absorption into the im- 
mensity of that nature that no man has dared 
as yet to blaspheme. There is much to truth- 
fully express which requires paradox, and 
these are of them. It is a confused world, and 
in such confusion there must be affirmative 
opposites; to declare these may require con- 
flicting words, but from such discordant clash 
often comes the most important truth. 

“ I might dilate upon the disasters of my 
life. You know them — my failures, my fol- 
lies, my fancies, my frenzies — you know 
them almost in detail. But I am not petu- 
lant, querulous, or angry, and I do not do it. 
I possessed imagination that builded me a 
house of life, with lofty columns and wide 
architrave. I had the means to people my 
house with imagined actualities; but now 
the frieze lies along the foundation, and my 
realities have not the substance of dreams. 
My fortune is gone, and here in this miser- 
able chamber I scrawl words I scarce heed 
and never shall read ; here in poverty, al- 
most in darkness, for the horizon is lost in 
mist, the west is hung with wolf pelts, and 
the night — the Night — is at hand. 


no 


PAPOOSE 


“ The world will dismiss me from thought 
with flippant condemnation, saying that my 
ruin is of my own making. It may be, but 
I am therefore the more worthy of atten- 
tion. If the world would really know any- 
thing of human existence, it must study the 
life, not of him who has succeeded, but of 
him who has failed. Success may be an 
accident, or the point where linked and 
common concatenation is chain-bolted to a 
necessary result. But a man always ruins 
himself characteristically, and his failure ex- 
hibits his real nature. He is the natural 
man, and — seeming paradox again — he is 
often the happiest man. His nature has 
had its exercise ; he has striven along the 
line of its tendencies. He has lived. Nine 
times in ten he who has succeeded has only 
lifted and planted foot in marked places. 
Good sense has been a soul-stifling bane ; 
good maxims benumbing restraints. I am 
a failure. I have lived after my own fash- 
ion, and if I have not achieved happiness,* 
who may? I have ruined myself in my own 
way. I have missed no chance, neglected 
no opportunity. Myself and I rejoiced in 
our youth and my fortune. All is gone. 


PAPOOSE 


II 


Myself — my last coin — I drop to-day into 
that slot — the grave. 

“ I have a few things left whereupon I 
might realize enough to pay life’s wages for 
some days longer. I have lived for a fort- 
night on the works of Herr Schopenhauer — 
something, I flatter myself, extraordinary, if 
not unique. The complacent omniscience 
in prose, and the lightness and sweetness in 
verse, in certain volumes of Matthew Arnold 
might sustain me possibly for a week ; but 
perhaps I overestimate my strength. I ne- 
gotiated a Barbadienne Faust to a gentle- 
man of the Order of the Golden Three Balls 
ten days ago. Happy Faust, who lived in 
a time when men could sell their souls ! 
Now there is no longer a devil, and if I at- 
tempted to raise the wind on such security 
in any other market, I would be regarded 
as a common swindler, attempting to obtain 
goods under false pretences. I have limbs, 
senses, health. You once did me the honor 
to say that I had faculties that would not 
be inapt at turning pennies or earning plau- 
dits. But why make use of any of these ? 
Why should I take pains to support this 
clumsy body that gave me so little satisfac- 


II2 


PAPOOSE 


tion, even when I was not put to such trou- 
ble for its keep ? A bullet shall close the 
disjointed phrase of my life; a bullet shall 
be the period that ends this jargon, unintel- 
ligible to myself and to all. 

“ Do not think that I am careless or flip- 
pant. All solemnities of the moment stand 
around me. What is gone I know ; what is 
to come, who can tell ? Myriads have be- 
lieved in futurity; in such comparison how 
poor, how paltry, is individual doubt ! Think 
of the massed suffering of ages borne in sus- 
taining credence, and one man’s trouble 
seems but peevishness. I think of one 
man’s complaint in the sweep of the world’s 
lamentation, and it seems but as the creak 
of a loosened shutter in the roar of the 
north wind. Others live, they say, because 
life is a duty; because I have had some 
small argumentative business with myself, 
and rays of perhaps better light have at 
times shot through mere logic, and I may 
have seemed to have freed myself from 
obligation, shall I desert? But — but much 
thought has made me weary, too weak for 
effective review. I have said my life shall 
have its period ; an interrogation-point were 


PAPOOSE 


113 

better punctuation ; with weak iteration I 
echo Rabelais’ ‘ Perhaps.’ The pellet of the 
pistol ball shall physic my present pain — 
characteristic cure — life true to itself to the 
last. Is there no button-hole in a shroud? 
I cannot seize Death by a lapel and ply him 
with questions. 

“ I go to forget ; I expect to be forgotten. 
Pity me, despise me; they bury suicides 
now at such cross-roads. 

“I doubt if I have really said anything, 
when I wanted to say so much, and that so 
clearly. I do not even know what I have 
said, for I am not calm, unimpatient ; I 
seem goaded as with some strange haste. 
But, fast friend, tried comrade, I bid you a 
good lifetime ; wish me a good eternity. 

“ Morris.” 

The young man paused, and looked up 
with half-bewildered stare. Wholly sane, 
perhaps, when he began to write, the weight 
and multiplicity of his thoughts, the stress 
of the time, as perhaps some might infer 
from what he had written, had wrought in 
him at last something like madness. In- 
telligence now, for a moment at least, 
8 


PAPOOSE 


114 

seemed to struggle back to the world of 
sense and comprehensibility. He placed to- 
gether the loose sheets on which he had 
written, even numbered the leaves; then, 
folding them carefully, he placed them in 
an envelope, sealed it, and wrote a name 
upon it — “ Philip Vassel, Esq." — and then 
an address. 

It had grown so dark that the figures on 
the dial of the little clock could not be seen 
from where he sat. He rose, and stepped 
quickly across the floor. “ Ten minutes of 
five," he said. For a moment he stood in 
apathetic self- absorption, then he hastily 
drew open a drawer in the lower part of the 
bookcase. The object that he took from it 
shone, even in that dim light, in his hand. It 
was a small thing. It might at first liave 
seemed some costly, useless bibelot^ so rich 
was it with ivory and silver; some pretty 
plaything, were it not for a spiteful look, 
like the look of a pampered toy terrier. It 
was a highly ornamented revolver, but so 
small was it that it lay wholly within his 
palm — small, but at a man’s temple capable 
of deadly bark and bite. “ It might as well 
be at five as any other time," he said, clearly, 


PAPOOSE 


115 

and unconscious that he spoke. “ Seven 
minutes to eternity." He carried the clock 
to the table, and sat down. He did not 
bow his head this time ; he sat erect, star- 
ing at the dial before him. It seemed to 
him that he was lost in a confused, luminous 
haze, a sort of half-consciousness of some 
things and quick comprehension of others, 
mingled with confused memories of many 
things, as swarmed flies mingle, eddying 
about a spire, or around the spray ending a 
branch just stirred by the breeze, a puff 
of waving, shining mist in a summer sun- 
set — lost in a cloud that it seemed must 
instantly shift into a flash lighting up, with 
complete revealment, a moment crowded 
with recollections of a whole life — such a 
moment as he had read comes to dying 
men. But no such moment came. “ Per- 
haps it is not near enough," he said, again 
aloud. 

It was as if faculty of thought, use of 
mental processes, were gone. There was 
nothing left save indifferent recognition of 
the plain, clear, seemingly quite unimpor- 
tant fact of life. “ I might as well sit here 
waiting to take some narcotic," he said. 


ii6 


PAPOOSE 


But now came hurrying things — things 
unconnected, dissimilar, erratic. They came 
as eager bidders might hasten to the auction 
of a dead man’s chattels — hasten and jostle 
on the threshold. He remembered that a 
Frenchman — that was the first thought that 
shouldered in — had once said that suicide 
was ill-mannered, that it was the height of 
impoliteness to go where you were not in- 
vited, and for a moment the grim, facile 
epigram almost amused him, and he slightly 
smiled. But quickly hurrying, so closely 
crowding that they overlapped and partly 
obscured each other, came other thoughts, 
memories, disconnected, inappropriate — in- 
opportune he would have considered them 
had he had power of criticism left. He 
thought of an apple-tree as he had, when 
a child, once seen it in full blossom, when 
the pied flowers were as swarms of butter- 
flies alighted all over on its stiff little 
twigs; now the river before his uncle’s 
country place was as clear as on that summer 
afternoon when, a boy, he swam the spark- 
ling stream, than which the upper sky could 
not have been so blue, “ so cool, so calm, so 
bright now shot into vision the face, seen 


PAPOOSE 


117 

once, and once only, of a young girl who 
waited at a gate for some one — perhaps her 
lover — in a shaded and leafy lane through 
which he had hastily ridden, when a younger 
man, one autumn evening — a face that 
struck him like the clash of cymbals. And 
then suddenly, as if beneath some occult 
spell, in almost visible form and tangible 
substance, his situation seemed to stand be- 
fore him, and he became a horror-paralyzed 
spectator of himself. There were prefigured 
to him the terrible aspects of the tragedy 
about to be enacted, and of what would fol- 
low when the curtain had gone down. The 
sound of the pistol ; the crash of the ball ; 
the blood slow pulsing in its outflow; the 
oozing brain ; the rattle of the fallen weapon ; 
his own duller, heavier fall. Perhaps some 
one would hear the report of that discharge, 
and force the locked door — would find what 
he had hardly ceased to be, quivering, shud- 
dering, as it would be, as if still trembling at 
encounter with sudden death ; perhaps none 
would hear — in the big deserted building that 
was more probable — and limbs and features 
would harden into rigidity, and darkness 
would gather in the place as flocking ravens 


ii8 PAPOOSE 

gather to the slain, and all its space would 
become vacant of light as his own eyes, un- 
warmed as his heart, and, all night, that which 
he had become would be left alone in the 
horrible darkness and terrible silence — a 
silence only broken by the ticking of the 
clock, that would be like the clicking of the 
chisel of some busy stone-cutter at work upon 
black marble. And then would come a 
brazen to-morrow that would, in some way, 
crowd people into the room, and, as if it were 
a merit in itself, would play exhibitor of the 
dread thing he was. There would be ghastly 
faces and horrified exclamations, and — 
What noise was that in the street ? But 
was it of any consequence to him what noise 
it might be? 

He glanced at that diligent laborer, the 
little clock. With steady, sturdy beat it 
ticked away almost blithely at its work. 
There, in that place, it seemed indeed alive, 
and to torment a man with its activity. 

The last minute before five. 

His hand tightened upon the revolver’s 
small stock. The muzzle touched his temple. 
Scarce a thread of white lay between the 
hour point and the imperceptibly advancing 


PAPOOSE 


1 19 

minute-hand. Now the minute-hand passes 
the top of the X in XIL Now — 

Rap, rap, came a faint, fumbling knock at 
the door. 

Morris instinctively turned his head. The 
revolver already bore upon space. 

Rap, rap, once more. 

The revolver was slightly lowered. 

Rap, and then the knock suddenly ceased, 
and there was a sort of rustling, brushing 
noise as if something fell with slow descent, 
partly sustained by the door. 

Certainly this was annoying — and perplex- 
ing. There are times when a man has the 
right to expect to be alone, when any dis- 
turbance is intrusion. Can’t a gentleman 
take his own life in peace 7 he thought, with 
whimsical exasperation. But then a knock 
at the door. Darwin, as we all know, had 
an idea that perhaps the vertebrata are de- 
scended from an animal allied to existing 
tidal ascidians ; and that this might possibly 
account for the mysterious fact that many 
normal and abnormal vital processes of the 
human vertebrate seem under the influence 
of the moon. Possibly the impulse to an- 
swer a knock at our door has its origin in 


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some almost as remotely transmitted in- 
stinct, derived from aboriginal time, when a 
man had 

“ No enemy, 

But winter and rough weather,” 

and such a summons was an appeal for aid 
and shelter. Whatever may be the reason — 
perhaps because the world is so full of pos- 
sibilities, and imagination is so rich and 
vivid — it becomes an irresistible demand, 
strong in the very weakness of its petition, 
and even at such a time Morris was not 
able to free himself from the unavoidable 
inclination to answer the call. He placed 
the pistol on the table, and, stepping quickly 
to the door, unlocked it. It was much 
darker in the hall than in the room. Glanc- 
ing down, he saw what seemed a large 
bundle, so shapeless and still was it. He 
looked at it for a moment — in the moment 
recalling staggering, straggling faculties to 
power to comprehend actual things — and 
then, stooping down, sought by sense of 
touch to discover what it really was. At 
first he felt merely a fold of woollen cloth ; 
then, what he knew to be an arm ; and then 
soft hair, and a cold, small human face. 


PAPOOSE 


I2I 


“ It’s a child,” he said, “and half frozen.” 

He gathered the limp body in his arms, 
and carried it to the big arm-chair in front 
of the fireless stove ; he seized the chair in 
which he had been sitting, and, raising it 
above his head, he brought it down with such 
violence on the floor that it flew into many 
fragments. These, with an old newspaper 
caught from the table, he stuffed into the 
grate. A match picked from a scattered 
dozen upon a shelf beneath the stove-pipe 
in an instant ignited the paper, and certain 
grotesque shadows that had hung like so 
many vampire-bat skins in a wizard’s cell 
about the room began a danse macabre on 
the wall, tiptoeing and bowing to an elfin 
tribe of their kindred who ran towards them 
from out hiding-places behind chairs and 
tables. There was a little coal in a small 
box ; he rattled some of it down upon the 
flames, and many of the shadows, frightened 
at the noise, fled out of sight. Then he 
drew up the chair nearer the blaze. Taking 
off the child’s heavy shoes — one heel showed 
pinkly through a hole in the stocking — he 
placed a large book upon the hearth and the 
small feet upon it ; then he chafed the little 


122 


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hands, blue with cold, between his own. 
How strange — and it came in fleeting, tran- 
sitory thought — that what five minutes be- 
fore had seemed worse than useless to him- 
self seemed suddenly so inexpressibly pre- 
cious in this scantily clad child — something 
to be preserved if human exertion could do 
it ! But the sense of this incongruity was but 
for a moment ; the ragged waif occupied his 
active attention. A bright something ran 
over the small face, and the large eyes slowly 
opened in amazement. 

“Will I die?” she asked, faintly, as she 
gazed up at the man bending over her. “I 
don’t want to die.” 

“ No,” he answered, as heartily and as- 
suringly as he could ; “ not a bit of it.” 

“ I am glad,” she said, as her head sank 
again with a little sigh. 

His voice seemed to him strained, stiffened, 
and formal. 

“You’ll be all right soon,” he went on, 
speaking rapidly, and provoked that he 
could not command an easier and more 
natural tone. “You are only a little cold,” 
and he grew absolutely angry that, out of 
practice as he had been, he could not do 


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123 


more in softening his words. “ You will be 
warm in three minutes,” he added, a little 
more satisfactorily — “ a minute ” would have 
sounded harsh — “and then you will feel 
better.” 

“ I feel better now,” said the child, quite 
comfortably. “ But don’t watch me so. 
“ I’ve a-ma-zing dislike to being watched so.” 

“You’ve what ?” he asked, astonished at 
the long words, and looking at her even 
more earnestly. 

“ A-ma-zing dislike,” she repeated, turning 
a languid face towards him, almost with fine- 
ladyish air. 

“Oh!” he exclaimed, and began looking 
at the grate. 

“ That is a very nice fire,” she said. “ I 
don’t think I ever saw a nicer fire. I don’t 
pos-i-tive-ly.” 

And as the word fell very slowly, Morris 
turned and looked at her again. 

“ Didn’t I tell you, don’t ?” she said, with 
a strange little look of command. “ But 
what a soft chair, and what pretty colors ?” 
and with a light forefinger she followed the 
shape of a spreading leaf woven in the tapis- 
serie, “ You must be a very rich man.” 


124 


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If some one had ascribed to him omni- 
science or omnipresence, the powers of an 
Indian adept, or the ability of a circus con- 
tortionist, Morris could not have been more 
staggered. That she had not a doubt about 
what she said, was plain in the wondering, 
almost admiring glance that she turned upon 
him. 

“ It’s nice to have money,” she said, and 
she held her small hand before her face, 
almost as if she were careful of her com- 
plexion, and afraid that the fire-light would 
hurt it. If the broken-winged sparrow that 
he had picked up in the gutter a week ago 
had bent its pathetic eye upon him and 
given utterance to some aphorism, say from 
the collection of maxims Lord Chesterfield 
gathered from the memoirs of Cardinal de 
Retz, he could not have been more amazed. 
He looked at her attentively. Her cheeks 
were sunken; her lips were pale; her eyes 
unnaturally bright. Over her features was 
the worn, weary look — the look that lies 
upon features shadowed and sharpened by 
the pinch and privation of poverty. But in 
her case it did not seem unpleasant ; there 
mingled with it no aspect of unnatural precoc- 


PAPOOSE 


125 


ity, nothing of the expression of the impish 
acuteness of too-clever children. It seemed 
only the result of hardship, of experiences 
that should not have come to one so young. 
But she was a beautiful child even as she 
was, with that look of race, or breeding, or 
whatever it is, the quality of all really fine 
organisms never wholly lost, no matter in 
what strait the human or brute creature may 
be ; that something that belongs to all 
thoroughbreds — those who win the race by 
a neck if needs be, but win — those among 
us of pure lineage, trace of which may have 
been, perhaps, for a time lost, drawn from 
remote source, as it may have been, and 
through and over common clay — to those 
who dare and do, compelled to do and dare 
by something in their nature — something 
giving assurance of endurance and strength 
in reserve equal to all assail, and even in 
defeat not wholly overcome. 

Don’t you feel much better now ? ” 
he asked, as he looked down upon this 
calm little creature, evidently so self-pos- 
sessed. 

“ I think,” she said, unhesitatingly, ‘‘ that 
I am hungry.” 


126 


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Of course she must be hungry. He was 
a brute not to have thought of that before. 
But what could he give her ? A man on the 
point of committing suicide, and in such 
rooms, would hardly be apt to have a well- 
stocked larder: and, to tell the truth, so little 
had Morris had of coin or of any currency 
for the last weeks that command over food 
or drink had been but slight. 

“ Tm afraid,” he said, blankly, “ that I 
haven’t anything.” 

If, half an hour before, any sensible man 
had told him that he, Richard Morris, then 
only thinking of quitting an existence that 
he found unbearable, would so soon and so 
eagerly long for the possession of the sim- 
plest sustenance that might maintain life for 
a hungry child, that he should feel such 
awkward shamefacedness that he had not 
anything to give her, he would have turned 
from him with the scorn that most merely 
sensible people deserve. 

“ But I can go out and get something,” 
he added, suddenly remembering the for- 
tune of a few pieces of silver loose in his 
pocket. 

“ Please do,” she said ; “ I am very hun- 


PAPOOSE 


127 


gry. I haven’t eaten anything for a whole, 
long, awful day. Won’t — won’t you please 
hurry ?” 

A whole day ! This child without food 
for a whole day ! The thing was startling ; 
the thought of it one to make a man pro- 
voked with himself and his kind. She must 
have food, and at once. He started towards 
the door, but he did not like to leave her 
alone, weak as she was. He hesitated, and 
then suddenly, with glad relief, he remem- 
bered that he had some preserved fruit and 
some crackers purchased long before, when 
he had yet hope, and thought of striving to 
make something of his life. He found them, 
and gave the already opened bottle and the 
untied parcel to the child. But, he asked 
himself, had he done rightly? Were Wies- 
baden strawberries and those dry, sweet bis- 
cuits really the thing to give to a starving 
little being like this ? But already she had 
the bottle under one arm, and one of the 
crackers loaded with the luscious berries at 
her lips. 

“ Oh !” she said in an instant ; and there 
was ineffable depth of satisfaction — unspeak- 
able ecstasy of gratification, in the half- 


128 


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murmured, half -ejaculated syllable. The 
countenance of a gourmet suffused with de- 
light in a just-tasted and supremely delicate 
plat ; of a connoisseur, aglow as the bouquet 
and flavor of some rare, age -thinned ichor 
of some royal vine melt along two senses 
for the instant seemingly made exquisitely 
one — were but blanks compared to the 
child’s face as she finished the quick feat of 
swallowing her first mouthful. But as the 
second half-cracker and its load disappeared, 
Morris wondered if he should not stop her. 
Famished persons, he had read, should not 
be allowed to eat so much and so quickly. 

“ I never, never tasted anything so good,” 
she managed to say. “ Do you always eat 
such good things?” 

This last, after a large part of a well- 
freighted cracker had been swallowed in one 
mouthful. 

He did not answer. He had unexpectedly 
made a humiliating discovery. He was very 
hungry himself — fiercely, ravenously hungry. 
Whether it was the child’s eager voracity or 
only the nearness of this vivid bit of human 
life that relaxed the tension of the last mor- 
bid days and humanized him into something 


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129 


more natural, he did not take time to think. 
He was hungry; that was the present, active 
fact. He picked up one of the crackers, and 
almost hesitatingly took a bite of it. 

“ Put on some of this,” she insisted, with 
a certain richness in her gobbled words, for 
her mouth was full. 

He did as he was bidden, and, sitting on 
the arm of the chair, he began eating with 
as much appetite and almost as much sense 
of gratification as the child herself. It was 
a close thing between them, first one and 
then the other at the bottle; and sometimes, 
when his hand wfts slightly before hers, she 
rapped it with a cracker, and insisted that 
her own should be first. 

Soon he laughed. 

“ Don’t,” said the child — “don’t laugh 
that way. Aren’t you glad?” 

He stopped. It was grotesquely ludi- 
crous, enough to divert a very devil with 
any touch of facetiousness in his diabolism. 
A handful of minutes or so ago, and actually 
he was going to shoot himself, and here he 
was seated on the same chair with a child 
on whom he had never laid eyes before, 
silently and diligently eating “ bread and 
9 


130 


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honey.” It was like smearing the ghastly 
face of tragedy with jam, like filling the ter- 
rible hand of self-slaughter with bonbons. 
What anticlimax could have been more 
complete? what bathos more profound? 

And still they sat speechless, and, like the 
sailor’s wife, 

“mouncht, and mouncht, and mouncht,” 

only now and then turning eager, curious, 
watchful eyes upon each other. 

“What is your name?” he asked at length, 
as he shook the cracker crumbs from his 
fingers. 

“ Papoose,” she answered, quickly, as she 
took a bite of the last cracker of them all. 

“But that’s hardly your real name, you 
know,” he said. “You must have some 
other.” 

“ Oh yes !” she answered, looking into the 
bottle, where some inches of its contents 
still remained, and as if the other name were 
a wholly unimportant superfluity, “ I’ve an- 
other — two — Marjory Penhallow.” 

“ Marjory Penhallow,” he repeated. 

“ Every one calls me Papoose,” she said. 


PAPOOSE 


131 

indifferently. I think you’d better call me 
Papoose.” 

He did not understand exactly how it was 
brought about, but from that moment he 
knew he was enlisted in her cause. Not that 
her supremacy had been declared ; quite the 
contrary ; her dependence had been estab- 
lished, that was all — a dependence more 
masterful than any tyranny. 

“How old are you?” he asked, hesi- 
tatingly, and almost fearful of appearing 
rude. 

“Twelve and a half,” she answered. “ Is 
not that too young?” she added, contemp- 
tuously. 

“ I have known people younger,” Morris 
answered, with grave politeness. 

“ It seems strange,” she said, “but I ought 
to be older. It seems to me that I have 
lived years and years.” 

“ And,” he asked, taking advantage of the 
opportunity — for there was a diminutive 
stateliness, a minimized dignity, about this 
young person that had hitherto led him in- 
sensibly to abstain from asking her such 
questions, although he was desirous of know- 
ing what had brought her to his door in 


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such condition and at such a time — have 
you always lived here 

In this city, do you mean, or in this 
house she asked, precisely. 

“Do you — did you live in this building?” 
he demanded, in astonishment. 

It was a large structure, with many rooms 
and long, narrow halls. Its lower part was 
used for shops, the second and third stories 
for small manufacturing work, and the top 
for cheap lodging -rooms. Now, as it hap- 
pened, Morris was the only occupant of the 
cold, deserted upper story, where tenants 
came and went with such significant fre- 
quency. 

“ A long time,” she answered. “ The 
Necromancer and Isaac Newton and I.” 

“ Who ?” 

“The Necromancer and Isaac Newton 
and I,” she repeated. “The Necromancer 
was my uncle, Isaac Newton was the cat, 
and I was myself.” 

“Why the Necromancer?” 

“Because he used to dcf such strange 
things. He made queer-looking little bits 
of machines, and had queer mixtures in 
queer glasses. He had a white beard, just 


PAPOOSE 


133 


like necromancers in books. He was a 
great inventor. I always wanted him to 
discover the philosopher’s stone I’d read 
about, but he wouldn’t.” 

“No?” said Morris. 

“ No, he wouldn’t and she went on 
slowly, and with a great effort of memory : 
“he said modern chem-is-try did more than 
ancient al-che-my ever thought of doing; 
that no trans-mu-tation was as wonderful as 
some of the results of e-lec-tri-cal action; 
that his philosopher’s stone would make us 
as rich as if he could really make gold. I did 
not understand him very well. Do you ?” 

“ I think so,” said Morris. “ And the cat ?” 
he asked. 

“ The cat was Isaac Newton, because he 
was the greatest man that ever was,” she 
said, confidently. 

“ How long did you live here?” he asked. 

“Years, but not in these rooms. They 
were too grand for us. We lived in small 
ones on the other side.” 

“ Why did you go away ?” 

“The Necromancer died,” she answered, 
with something hushed in her tone. “ I 
found him lying beside his work-bench one 


134 


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day, on the floor, and there was a little spot 
of blood on his white forehead. They said 
it was falling on the floor did it. Oh, he 
was so thin and light that I could have lifted 
him almost !” 

Neither spoke for a moment. 

“I held his head,” she went on, “and 
screamed and screamed. He was so stiff, 
you know, and hard. Then I kissed him on 
his forehead where there wasn’t any blood, 
and then I screamed again, and then people 
came.” 

She cast one look over her shoulder into 
a dark part of the room, and then turned 
quickly towards the protecting light of the 
coals, now brightly aglow in the stove. 

“Then the Schroeders came,” she went on. 

“ Who were the Schroeders ?” he asked in 
a minute. 

“They were very nice people,” she said, 
with a quick adaptability ; “ de-light-ful peo- 
ple. They used to live in these rooms, and 
that’s why I came here to-night. They were 
just married. They had a rose-bush in the 
window, and a canary-bird. Isaac Newton 
used to come here with me, and when he 
saw the canary-bird he would roll his eyes 


PAPOOSE 


135 


around, and just open his mouth a little, so 
that you could see a little white of his 
teeth, and I’m sure he would have eaten 
it if he could. Mr. Schroeder — she called 
him Max, but of course I couldn’t do that 
— was a piano-tuner, and I don’t believe 
piano-tuners are very rich men. But they 
were much richer than we, and they were 
so nice to me; They took me to their 
rooms and kept me weeks.” 

“ And this was a long time ago ?” he 
asked. 

“ Ever so long ago — in the spring,” she 
continued, But one day Mrs. Schroeder 
found a letter in one of my old dresses that 
said that if anything happened I was to 
be sent to some cousins who lived in the 
country, and that they were to take care of 
me. And so one day Mr. Schroeder took 
me to see them, and oh! they were such 
strange people ! One Christmas the jani- 
tor’s second youngest baby got an ark in 
his stocking, and that ark was in-hab-i-ted 
by Noah and Shem and Ham. Well, they 
were just like my cousins, only that they 
were much smaller, of course I never saw 
a house like theirs; but then I have not 


136 


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seen the inside of many houses ; a great, big 
place, almost as large as this, that was never 
warm, and where there was no dust. It 
seemed to me sometimes that if it could be 
a little dirtier, it would be a little warmer. 
Oh, it was so clean ! it seemed to me that 
the things were almost — raw. I don’t think 
that they had much money either — how 
very strange it is that really nobody I know 
seems to have much money ? — but they told 
me that they would not sell it and move 
into one of the small warm cottages, for 
anything; that they had in-her-i-ted it, and 
that it was an-ces-tral. Well, they talked 
together, and then they finally said that 
they would keep me. Then Mr. Schroeder 
went away, and then I cried, and they stood 
and looked at me so solemnly and so kindly, 
as if they didn’t know what to do with me.” 

“And did you live there long?” asked 
Morris, as she paused for a moment. 

“ Long !” she exclaimed. “ Two thousand 
years by the parlor clock.” 

“ Well ?” he said, laughing at last. 

“ Oh, you want to hear more ? We didn’t 
have much re-cre-a-tion there — some of my 
words I’ve only read, and I’m not quite sure 


PAPOOSE 


137 


of the pro-nun-ci-a-tion — in that house. Sun- 
day there was the most to do, for we used 
to drive to church with a horse with queer, 
straight bones like rulers, and sit in straight 
up-and-down pews like my cousins’ chair- 
backs, and listen to a man who did not 
seem to me to talk very civilly to the peo- 
ple.” 

But they were always kind to you ?” 
said Morris. 

Oh yes ; but there is such a difference 
in ‘kind,’ you know. There was the Ne- 
cromancer’s ‘ kind ’ — the biggest ” — and she 
held out her arms as if she would include 
miles of space; “and there was the Schroe- 
ders’ ‘kind;’ and then there is your ‘kind’ — 
all of them different,” and she looked up at 
him. “ What is your name?” she asked, sud- 
denly. 

“ Morris.” 

“Yes, Morris, they were always one kind 
of ‘ kind ;’ but really they didn’t know how, 
and I cried and cried, and thought I should 
die.” 

“What didn’t you like?” 

“The country, for one thing. It was aw- 
ful.” 


138 


PAPOOSE 


“Oh!” exclaimed Morris, softly. He had 
always had a vague idea that children al- 
ways liked the country, and the answer sur- 
prised him. 

“ It was frightful. Perhaps I should like 
it if it was more pop-u-lated ; but there was 
almost no one to see all day long, and al- 
most nothing to do. No swarms of people, 
no lovely shop windows, no hand-organs — • 
nothing. In the summer it was bad, very 
bad, but in the winter — oh ! It was like be- 
ing shut up in a cave in the dark, and I was 
afraid. At night I could only sit and think 
how it was at home, where the pretty elec- 
tric lights were shining, and the people were 
going to the theatres ; and I couldn’t stay 
out there any longer, Morris, and so I ran 
away.” 

“ What?” 

“ Ran away,” she repeated. 

“ How did you do that ?” 

“When Mr. Schroeder went away he gave 
me — my cousins didn’t come clear to the 
gate — a little money. He said he thought 
— he was looking back at my woman cousin, 
who stood on the steps and held out her 
hand to see if it was raining — that I might 


FAPOOSfi 


139 


some time want to buy something to please 
myself ; for, God bless me ! he said, he didn’t 
believe I would have much to please me 
there. I kept that money for a per-i-od of 
dis-tress, and when I ran away I walked to 
the station ; it wasn’t far, not more than fif- 
teen blocks. I stepped up to the janitor of 
the station-house and said : ‘ Is that enough 
to buy a ticket to New York? If it is, I 
want a very good one, please.’ ^ What are 
you going to New York for?’ he asked, while 
he was pulling a ticket out of a place. ‘To 
see friends,’ I said, and then he gave me the 
ticket. And that was true, for I was going 
to see the Schroeders. I got to the city, and 
then I had to ask my way, first from one 
policeman and then from another, and I 
kept getting hungrier and colder, and then I 
lost my way, and it has taken me all day to get 
here, and the Schroeders are gone, after all, 
and I’m sure I don’t know what I shall do.” 

There was little of doubt, less of helpless- 
ness, and nothing at all of despair expressed 
in her last few words. So far was she from 
doubt or fear that it was evident that her 
only anxiety was to obtain the rest of the 
strawberries without cracker as she was. 


140 


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She tipped up the bottle, and tried to cram 
her hand down the neck. 

‘‘ I think,” said Morris, “ that perhaps, you 
know, you hadn’t better eat any more of 
that now.” 

But I am very hungry,” she insisted. 

Suppose we go out and get something — 
well — healthier,” he said. 

“ And bring it back here and eat it ?” she 
exclaimed. 

“If you like.” 

“ Shoes,” she cried. “ Give me my shoes.” 

Morris handed them to her, and in a mo- 
ment she had them on, and with a quick 
stamp or two she settled her feet well into 
them. 

The weather had suddenly changed. As 
Morris and Papoose stepped out of the 
building, they found the street and side- 
walks white with the new-fallen snow. It 
had been cold in the afternoon, but it was 
much colder now, and was freezing rapidly. 
The city no longer seemed murky, dismal, 
and forbidding, but bright, clean, and spark- 
ling. The mud had stiffened, and was hid 
from sight ; the snow had filled the dusky 


PAPOOSE 


141 

corners and crannies in the forlorn build- 
ings, and lay thickly on the dark, sullen 
roofs. The electric lights were somewhat 
dimmed by the thick flakes, and each looked 
like some great globular, semi-transparent 
fruit with gleaming core ; but still they man- 
aged to light everything very brilliantly, 
causing the fringing icicles on the window- 
ledges and eaves to glisten, until it might 
seem in some places almost as if the houses 
were illuminated for some festival, with rows 
of suspended and sparkling lamps. The 
vehicles in the street were fewer, but the 
people on the sidewalks were, if anything, 
more numerous. The dull roar of the 
wheels was stilled, and the crowds no longer 
walked as if in tread-mill work, but with brisk 
step, as if freed, at least for a time, from 
routine and care. The ceaseless, unwearied 
murmur of the great city filled the air — that 
wonderful diapason, present always, but with 
varying resonance, and at most times with 
saddening or dismaying undertone ; now, 
however, rising almost with something of 
gentle assurance, of quieting promise, as 
might some Brobdingnagian lullaby. And 
the air — the air gave quick elation. The 


142 


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change was as great and evident as might 
be noticed if some sad, dark water of some 
iron - impregnated spring were suddenly 
charged with keen vivacity and glad vola- 
tility. 

Morris had not been out for two days, nor 
had he for a longer time given attention to 
the things of the surrounding world. Now 
he noticed the stir, the brilliancy, the 
thronged ways, the illuminated shops, with 
some surprise. Was the city always like 
this, and had he never realized it? Was it 
his mood or the world that was changed, or 
both ? 

‘‘ Everything seems very gay to-night,” he 
said, as he took the child’s hand. 

“ Why !” Papoose exclaimed, in amaze- 
ment. “ Don’t you know?” 

“ No,” he confessed. 

“ Why, it’s Christmas Eve ! Didn’t you 
know that ? I thought that everybody 
knew that.” 

Christmas Eve, and not to know it! He 
had never felt quite so humiliated in his life. 
There was not a beggar in the street, not a 
prisoner in his cell, who did not know it, 
whose heart was not a little gladder, whose 


PAPOOSE 


143 


feeling was not a little kindlier, for the 
knowledge. He was but a drivelling creat- 
ure, with small faculties in petty derange- 
ment ; he was a poltroon who would be fugi- 
tive from annoyance, would hasten out of 
life in mere spite. He had gathered up a 
store of ills, and in his vain desire to put the 
great scheme of creation in fault, he set 
value by them as a madman might to the 
pebbles he thought diamonds. Any village 
idiot, wandering afield with straw -decked 
hat, and cackling with laughter at the good 
things he heard from his familiars in the air, 
was wise and worthy of admiration beside 
his cowardly, imbecile self. So he thought, 
or so he instinctively felt, as he again walked 
the world, the keen wind blowing in his face, 
and the lights about him, and a warm little 
hand tight in his own. Kill himself! Kill 
himself. And on Christmas Eve ! The hor- 
ror of it 1 

Papoose marched on in a delirium of vivid 
delight. The movement, the general air of 
festivity, charmed her; the noise delighted 
her ; but the windows — the wonderful pano- 
rama of the shop windows — filled her with 
complete and ceaseless satisfaction. The con- 


144 


PAPOOSE 


fectioners’, where white-capped and aproned 
men pulled out and about the gigantic skeins 
of shining candy ; the toy-shops, where seemed 
collected the small models from which every- 
thing had been made ; the jewellers’, where 
the gems glittered on the dark plush cushions 
only less brilliantly than the now unclouded 
stars in the wind-cleared heavens — in the soft, 
black velvet sky — all wxre enchanting. But 
it was before a great jeweller’s shop that she 
paused the longest and looked the most wist- 
fully. 

“ Oh !” she said, shaking her head slowly, 
“ if I only had one ring, even like that dear 
little one with the blue flower, I would be 
happy — happy — happy !” She turned reluc- 
tantly away.. “ It’s nice to look at them, any- 
way,” she sighed. 

But her beloved and regained city filled 
her with too great a joy to be easily sub- 
dued, and she quickly brightened up. 

“ I haven’t got much money, you know,” 
said Morris, apologetically, as they went on. 

Oh no !” she answered, quickly and cheer- 
fully, as if that of course were everybody’s 
natural condition, and no more to be deplored 
than the fact that one has no more than 


PAPOOSE 


145 


ten toes. “But you’ve got some, haven’t 
you ?” 

“ That’s all,” and he drew from his pocket 
a few half-dollars and quarters. 

“All that to spend at once?” she cried. 
“ But won’t you need it for rent?” 

“ I think not.” 

“Surely?” 

“ Surely.” ‘ 

“ Oh, how much we shall buy ! Let me 
show you.” 

Papoose knew the streets of that quarter 
of the town as a nun knows her cloister. 
She knew exactly where she wished to go. 
Gradually Morris found his pockets filled 
with packages, his hands with bundles. Pa- 
poose, rich in experience, worked wonders 
with the small handful of money ; never be- 
fore would he have believed that so little 
would have bought so much. 

“ Go to the best, and you’ll get the best, 
and — the most,” she said, sagaciously, as they 
left a huge establishment, where she had judi- 
ciously invested twenty-five cents at least. 

Every one remembered her; everywhere 
she was greeted as an old friend. At the 
baker’s she was treated as a distinguished 


10 


146 


PAPOOSE 


stranger; at the little French shop selling 
charcuterie she received an ovation; at the 
great grocer’s, a triumph. The hurrying 
clerks in the largest and most crowded places 
treated her with particular deference, and 
received her orders with peculiar attention. 
All had missed her, and were glad to see her. 
The greetings she received affably ; the 
questions she answered briefly. She was 
very busy, and had no time for gossip now. 
At last she announced that all her purchases 
had been made. 

As they returned to what Papoose already 
designated as “home,” Morris felt himself an- 
other man. An hour perhaps before, he had 
been of a different nature, out of kindred 
with his kind ; now he felt as if he had found 
a new naturalization. He felt like the oth- 
ers; he too carried bundles as so many did, 
and dropped them and laughed, and was 
laughed at by a companion. How long a 
way he had travelled in a short time ! He 
was really almost jolly. Human voices rang, 
but gently and yet deeply, and with more 
cheer than any voices he had ever before 
heard; the crowd was no obstruction, rather 
something companionable and pleasant ; the 


PAPOOSE 


147 


jostle of a shoulder an informal salutation ; 
every stare a “ Merry Christmas!” Meet the 
world fairly, and it will strike hands Avith 
you in fair bargain ; loosen a strap so that 
its load will sit easier on its shoulder, and 
it will help you with your own burden ; 
slink away in hypochondriacal mood, and 
can you expect it with its wholesome, healthy 
strength, with all the careless exuberance of 
its life, to turn after you, to run down your 
small blind alley, and nourish your petty 
vanity with the pap of cajolery? In some 
such fashion now ran his thoughts. 

Suddenly Papoose stopped, and with her 
finger on her lip — a frequent gesture with 
her — looked up at the sky. 

How dark it is away — there!” she said, 
slowly. ‘‘I always feel as if it must be all 
so, all about us, below us too, and that the 
Necromancer has gone down through a dark 
door into — that.” 

How dark it would have been with him ! 
thought Morris, ‘‘away — there,” had his 
journey not been stopped upon the thresh- 
old by a fainting child’s weak hand. 

Morris placed the packages on the table. 


148 


PAPOOSE 


‘‘ We should have got something to light up 
the place,” he said, reproachfully. 

‘‘ Open the long bundle,” commanded Pa- 
poose, briefly. 

Within were two candles. 

“ Is it your pleasure that the illumination 
begin ?” he asked. 

Papoose nodded. 

Morris placed one candle in a long Vene- 
tian glass — a piece of rich, rare, twisted Mu- 
rano work — and the other in the neck of a 
beer bottle, and put them on a small mantel 
behind the stove. 

“ The effect,” he said, stepping back, “ is 
even brilliant.” 

Papoose undid the other bundles, and 
spread their contents on the table. There 
was bread ; there were several sausages, very 
fat and brown ; there were some white, 
creamy cheeses ; and there was a box of sar- 
dines; a Yorkshire pie — purchased at the 
suggestion of Morris ; and there was a pack- 
age of chocolate, already prepared for use ; 
and there was another bottle of the straw- 
berries. 

“ I can get some water in the hall,” she said ; 
and, seizing a dish, she ran out of the room. 


PAPOOSE 


149 


In a moment she had the chocolate boil- 
ing on the fire, in a pot that she recognized 
as belonging to the Schroeders, and that 
Morris had acquired with all the other goods 
of an outgoing tenant, which he had pur- 
chased without much thought of what he 
was getting. 

Now we can begin,” Papoose said, final- 
ly, when she had set the table to her satis- 
faction, and when the chocolate was quite 
ready. 

Morris had a bottle or two of Apollinaris 
that he had procured, and, opening one, he 
filled a glass for Papoose. But she did not 
like it. After a sip she turned away with a 
disgusted moiie. 

“Oh, the horrid stuff!” she exclaimed. 
“It spits in my face.” 

They were very hungry ; they were very 
silent. There are repasts at which conver- 
sation is not the most brilliant part of the 
performance. 

While they were still eating, one of the 
great events of the evening took place. 

“ Oh !” cried Papoose, suddenly drawing up 
her feet. Almost at the same instant a feeble, 
plaintive “ me-ouw ” sounded under the table. 


150 


PAPOOSE 


“ It’s Isaac Newton,” she exclaimed, look- 
ing down, and immediately she was on her 
knees with the cat in her arms. “ But how 
he does look !” 

Certainly Isaac Newton did not look 
flourishing. He was thin to emaciation, 
his fur was ruffled and soiled, and his ears 
were torn and scarred. He had evidently 
encountered disastrous days and stormy 
nights, and there was a dispirited, not to 
say a dissipated, look about him that was 
very shocking. But he did not appear in the 
least aware of his own shortcomings. He 
acted quite as if nothing had happened, as 
if he were in his best evening dress. He 
calmly allowed himself to be stroked with- 
out any manifestations of undue delight, 
only purring very loudly, and butting his 
head energetically against the child’s arm. 

But Papoose was, on the^ whole, disap- 
pointed with the meeting. 

“ I think you’re a good-for-nothing old 
cat,” she said. “You’re not in the least 
glad to see me; but I’ll feed you all the 
same.” 

At last, between Morris and herself and 
Isaac Newton, almost everything was eaten. 


PAPOOSE 


151 

and Papoose settled herself back in her 
chair. 

“ Wasn’t it good ?” she said. 

“ Good ?” he answered. “ It was am- 
brosial.” 

“You were hungry too?” she said, in 
some astonishment. “ Why were you hun- 
gry with so much money ?” 

“ Because — I forgot,” he answered, lamely. 

“ You must have been very happy.” 

“ Or very miserable.” 

“ That is silly. When we are hungry and 
cold and alone, we are miserable. But you 
were not cold, and you had money to buy 
food, and you were in the city. Don’t you 
know anybody ?” 

“ A great many.” 

“ Then why were you alone ?” 

“ It is good to be alone sometimes,” he said. 

“ Never,” she answered, decidedly. “ Don’t 
they want to see you ?” 

“ Some do.” 

“ Then why don’t you see them ?” 

“ Because,” answered Morris, slowly, “ I 
suppose I am proud, and afraid they might 
think that I want their help.” 

“ How silly !” said Papoose, contemptu- 


152 


PAPOOSE 


ously. “ If you want their help, you want 
it. Why shouldn’t people help each' other? 
You’ve helped me.” 

“ I thought I had gone down too far to 
help any one.” 

“ Well, you see,” she responded, trium- 
phantly. “And if it hadn’t been for you, 
what would I have done? Are you sorry?” 

“ Very glad.” 

“ Then why shouldn’t they be glad ? I 
don’t understand you. You are very silly.” 

It struck Morris with something of aston- 
ishment that really, on the moment, he 
could not give a direct and concise state- 
ment of his woes that would satisfy this 
direct and practical fellow-creature. There 
was certainly something wrong. Before this 
healthy, cheerful little person anything he 
could have said would have seemed artificial 
and false. 

“ I wonder, Morris,” she said, “ if you are 
stupid. You haven’t said anything in the 
least amusing since I have been here, and 
then to be miserable, and on Christmas Eve! 
I never heard of anything so silly. Why, 
Christmas is meant to make us happy.” 

‘‘Yes,” said Morris. 


PAPOOSE 


153 


“ Of course,” she went on, “ there was a 
time long, long ago when there was no 
Christmas. Then the world was not really 
happy, for then it was only wise ; it did not 
know so well how to love. Then a Child 
was born, who grew to be a Man, and who 
taught it new things. People had known a 
great deal before, but they did not know 
how to love each other as well as now, for 
that was what He taught them.” And she 
added, slowly and laboriously, “ on earth 
peace, good will toward men.” 

“ Yes,” said Morris, in a very low tone. 

“ I have seen pictures of Him many times. 
They were not always quite the same, but 
very much alike. In them He is always sad. 
I wonder why, since He taught us happi- 
ness ?” She paused. “ And that is what 
Christmas is — His birthday — the birthday 
of the Man who showed us how to be 
happy.” 

Papoose sat gazing into the fire and strok- 
ing Isaac Newton’s bobbing head. As she 
finished speaking she closed her eyes for an 
instant, and then opened them very quickly. 
She was evidently becoming sleepy. 

Morris had forgotten her. He was think- 


154 


PAPOOSE 


ing of what he was, and what he had in- 
tended. Suppose there were no God — so ran 
his thoughts — yet here, if not the great con- 
trivance, was the great casualty of all things, 
and man the acme of the accident. How 
despicable to disgrace his kind by such ex- 
hibition — exhibition proving that the height 
of being is, after all, as weak as the pulp 
of protoplasm, as small as an atom of mat- 
ter ! Certainly even fortuity must have laws, 
and such an act as he had contemplated could 
not be within the true operation of forces 
strong enough to make and regulate a world. 
That a man should be coward enough to 
hide himself in oblivion, this was craven 
lese-majesty against creation however created. 
But if there be a God — and no human being 
was ever sure that there was not — what 
then ? The self-stultification of setting him- 
self up against the Most High, of nullifying 
the ordinance of his own life ; the insult of 
throwing back such gift to its Giver — what 
could such creature hope in eternity? What 
could such petty larcener who stole his own 
existence hope among those who had suf- 
fered and nobly borne? But he could think 
no more. How unsubstantial it all must 


PAPOOSE 


155 


really have been ! It had needed but the 
touch of a child’s hand, only a few mo- 
ments’ apposition with a clear, pure numan 
nature, to reteach him what life really is, 
to make him breathe its breath again with 
ample lungs. The old law was right, as it 
was in so many things that are called bar- 
barous. A suicide’s burial should be at the 
cross-roads, where the earth shall be so tram- 
pled that through it no ghost even can arise. 

Here Papoose stirred, making a brave 
struggle to keep awake. 

“What have you been thinking about?” 
asked Morris, with a start. 

“ I was thinking that it was Christmas 
Eve, and I was wondering if I hung up my 
stocking — ” 

Morris glanced quickly at her. It was 
not a matter likely to occur to him, and he 
had not thought of this very important part 
in the observance of Noel. But he had no 
more money wherewith to buy even the 
humblest gift, and surely on this night any 
place where money might be procured, as he 
had procured that which had supported 
him for the past days, must in very decency 
have folded its shutters, as bats their wings, 


156 


PAPOOSE 


and closed its doors for the time. A small 
fraction of one of the smallest sums that he 
had squandered without thought would have 
given her pleasure incalculable, and he re- 
gretted that he had no money for her as he 
had never regretted the want for himself. A 
little honest exertion and he would not have 
been in such a plight. But she should have 
something; Christmas morning should not 
bring her the great grief of finding herself 
giftless. 

“You might try,” he suggested. 

She shook her head wearily, but her stock- 
ing was already off, and her hand run into 
it. 

“ There’s a hole,” she said, and, with that 
power of quick transition from sadness to 
joy that characterized her, she laughed 
gayly. 

“ Here,” said Morris, picking up a piece of 
twine with which one of the bundles had 
been fastened ; “ we’ll mend it.” Clumsily 
he tied it around the torn part of the heel. 
“ There !” as he hung the stocking from the 
mantel. 

“The last time I hung up my stocking,” 
she said, “ I got this with the other things,” 


PAPOOSE 


157 


and she pulled from out of her dress a little 
gold locket hung upon a worn piece of ribbon 
around her neck. “ Isn’t she pretty?” she ask- 
ed, as she opened it and handed it to Morris. 

“Very,” he answered ; “ but it is very much 
like you.” 

“Yes,” she said ; “ it was my mamma.” 

“ Oh !” he exclaimed. Where had he seen 
the face before — lovely, petulantly attrac- 
tive, animatedly charming as the child’s 
own ? Had he seen it, or was his recollec- 
tion the memory of some painter’s canvas- 
caught ideal, or the lingering remembrance 
of some striking portrait ? In Papoose he 
had once or twice noticed expressions that 
in the same way seemed to remind him of 
somebody or something, and the face in the 
locket, in its more vivid suggestion, only in- 
creased his perplexity. 

“It was made before she ran away and 
married papa,” went on Papoose. 

Might it be possible? The idea was too 
preposterous even for a moment’s harborage, 
and yet — 

“ Mamma ran away just as I have, and 
they wouldn’t see her, and she wouldn’t see 
them, and she died.” 


158 


PAPOOSE 


He turned over the locket. There was 
the name still clear in the worn gold, and 
Avith the date, too. And so it was all ex- 
plained. 

• Papoose, with her head in one corner of 
the chair, had gone to sleep. 

Morris, in the unrest of conflicting emo- 
tions, had not thought what he should do 
with her for the night ; but now the ques- 
tion, if question there had been, seemed 
settled. He lifted her from the chair, and, 
carrying her into the next room, he placed 
her on the bed; then, covering her carefully 
with a blanket or two, he went out, drawing 
the portiere behind him. 

“ He must knoAv— and to-night,” he said, 
pausing again before the fire. “I’ll go my- 
self. I’ll accept his aid if he offers it. As 
she says, ‘ Why shouldn’t they be glad ?’ ’’ 

Now the crowd had disappeared, and the 
streets were almost deserted. As Morris 
walked quickly uptown, he thought again of 
the change the last few hours had brought. 
He had given help to a frail existence that 
might have been lost without his aid, even 
when he would have taken his own strong^ 


PAPOOSE 


159 


life. Which were the nobler thing ? He 
did not make direct answer to this self- 
question, but he felt that somewhere in that 
unuttered response lay the final solution of 
all his doubts and difficulties. 

He was passing before a great church, 
and through the gorgeous windows the light 
shone in soft, subdued color ; from within, 
the rich, massed music seemed to press even 
through the white stone walls in a purity and 
sweetness before unknown to him. The 
moon swept a cloud away, and shone on 
cornice and pinnacle, on frieze and spire, on 
the dainty carving of the marble, on the 
wreathed snow that in some places covered 
it, both emulous in unexcelling whiteness. 
Now the organ’s sound seemed to burst the 
cathedral doors, and in grand volume came 
a paean, an acclaim, a cry of proud, trium- 
phant joy, 

“ For unto us a Child is born.” 

It was a midnight service for Christmas 
Eve, and as he stood with his bowed head 
against the iron railing, he thought how truth 
had come to him that night from the lips of 
a child, and he realized as never before the 


i6o 


PAPOOSE 


significance of that birth more than eighteen 
hundred years ago — that event that has been 
of more moment to the world than any 
other since it emerged from chaos, and per- 
haps is of more momentous importance to- 
day than ever before. 

When Morris mounted the steps of the 
great house away up the Avenue, its whole 
front was dark, no light appearing except 
in the vestibule, where the heavy lamp was 
still burning. But he knew the habits of 
the inmates too well not to be certain that 
some one would be awake and on duty. He 
rang the bell confidently. Vassel’s own 
man opened the door, the butler doubtless 
having long gone to such sleep as a butler’s 
conscience permits. 

“ Mr. Richard !” exclaimed the man, start- 
ing back. 

“Yes, Jarvis, it is I,’’ said Morris. “I 
am no Christmas ghost. Is Mr. Vassel 
still up?” 

“ He is, Mr. Richard. He’s sitting in the 
library, thinking and thinking, as he’s always 
doing.” 

“ I’ll go alone,” said Morris, as he walked 


PAPOOSE 


i6i 


towards the room he knew so Avell. The 
door was partially open, and as he crossed 
the threshold he glanced around. He had 
not seen it for a long time — the gallery 
with the brass railing running around three 
of its sides ; the great mantel above the 
fireplace at the farther end rising to the 
ceiling; the volumes in thousands clinging 
and clustering tier on tier, the rich bind- 
ings and the dark shelvings deepening in 
their soft tones. The big table was litter- 
ed, as always, with pamphlets and papers 
in that peculiar confusion that denotes 
familiar use. Over all, the light seemed 
massed, condensed into something richer 
even than light, but everywhere almost the 
same. Anywhere an Elzevir Terence might 
easily be read, the most delicate touch of 
a Clovis Eve tooling clearly seen. No 
sound arose from the thick carpet as Mor- 
ris advanced. 

Vassel sat before the fire, one elbow upon 
the arm of his chair, his head on his hand. 

“ Philip,” said Morris. 

Vassel looked up without start or mani- 
festation of surprise. 

“You can leave us, Jarvis,” he said to 


I 


i 62 


PAPOOSE 


the man who had followed Morris into the 
room , and as he came forward Morris saw 
how much older he appeared, how changed 
he was from what he had been when he had 
last seen him. 

“ I am glad you have come,” he said to 
Morris as he took his hand. “ I have hoped 
for a long time that you would come. Sit 
here,” and he pointed to a chair opposite 
the one in which he had been seated. 

The two men gazed at each other for a 
moment without a word. 

I have come to ask your help,” said Morris. 

“ I would have given it without the asking 
had I known where to find you or how to 
give it.” 

“ I would not have accepted it then,” 
answered Morris. “ I would not do so new 
had I not learned much when I thought I 
knew the most. I have learned to-night 
life’s greatest lesson : in trying to help 
another I have helped myself. The touch 
of a hand weaker than mine has given rne 
strength ; the gift of one poorer than myself 
has given me riches. He is an inexperienced 
fool, Philip, who says that he can do without 
the companionship of his kind an arrogant 


PAPOOSE 


163 


braggart who thinks that he can dispense 
with such aid.” 

“ Have I ever felt that I was all-sufficient 
to myself?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Have I ever held my hand when I could 
give aid to any I thought worthy of it ?” 

“You have always been just; but we 
must be more — we must be generous. Om- 
niscience alone has the right to be simply, 
severely just ; humanity must be something 
more, lest it make mistake ; it must be 
amply generous. The spirit that in your 
father drove your sister from his house is 
in you. If he had not died so suddenly, can 
you doubt that he finally would have re- 
lented ? Do you doubt now what he would 
have done?” 

“Where did you learn what you tell me?” 

“ From a child.” 

“ From a child ?” 

“From a child who can teach you as 
much as she has taught me. You need aid 
of such kind as much as I did, who would 
have shot myself if it had not come. I bring 
you joy and grief. Can you bear either or 
both ?” 


1 64 


PAPOOSE 


“The last, yes; the first, I think so. I 
have not known it lately.” 

“ Philip,” said Morris, “she ” — pointing to 
the mantel, where a large picture framed in 
the marble was partially covered with a 
curtain — “ is gone, but it was her child who 
saved my life to-night. I think sense of the 
inadequacy of a life alone — lived for one’s 
self alone — perhaps has come to you before ; 
be helped, as I have been helped, to further 
knowledge before it is too late.” 

The purveyor of light the next morning 
gave it forth with Christmas prodigality. 
It was not light left over from yesterday’s 
supply, polished up and made ready for to- 
day’s use. It seemed rather of other es- 
sentials, of another nature. Its touch gave 
gladness; wherever it dwelt or lay it seemed 
a coating for delight. It threw itself, plate 
upon plate, upon the closed wooden shutters 
of the room where Papoose slept, and, run- 
ning into and filling their small cracks, seemed 
to drip down like molten solder, part silver 
and part gold. But it was noiseless, and 
could not break the sleep of the tired child. 
It was nearly noon when she awoke. She 


PAPOOSE 


165 


slowly opened her eyes and gazed about her. 
That she was puzzled by her surroundings 
was as evident as that she was wholly un- 
dismayed. 

A woman of fifty, almost stately in her 
heavy cloth dress, rose from the chair in 
which she sat at the head of the bed, and 
stood before her. 

‘‘Where am I?” asked Papoose, amazedly. 

“ You are in Mr. Morris’s rooms,” the 
woman answered. “ I am Mrs. Beattie, Mr. 
Vassel’s housekeeper; and here,” she said, 
“ is your maid F^licie.” 

That she must have awoke, somebody 
else, was the first thing that Papoose thought 
as she sat staring before her, and immedi- 
ately she had decided that she would not 
let them know who she really was — not at 
first. 

“ Where is Morris?” she asked. 

“ Mr. Morris and Mr. Vassel are in the 
next room,” answered Mrs. Beattie. “ Will 
you get up now?” 

It was a very different Papoose who drew 
back the porthre a little later. A rich dress 
hung in heavy folds about her ; rich furs 


PAPOOSE 


1 66 

were gathered at her throat ; upon her head 
was a small marvel of a hat, and on her 
hands were long, wrinkled gloves. 

Oh !” she exclaimed. 

Much was in the room that had not been 
there before. The divan was covered with 
packages, the tables with bundles and cases. 
The long-coated footman, who now stood 
just outside the door, had borne many arm- 
fuls from the heavy carriage that was at the 
entrance of the building. It had been diffi- 
cult to gather all the objects Christmas 
morning, but Vassel, assisted by Jarvis, 
who had accomplished wonders, with re- 
lieving lavishness, had managed to have it 
done. 

“ Oh 1” repeated Papoose. 

There were toys, fantastic and intricate ; 
trifles of all kinds, dainty and delightful ; 
there were things wholly unfitted for a child 
in their rarity and value. 

“ Oh, Morris,” she said, “ how could you 
have done it ?” 

“I didn’t,” he said. “You must thank 
another.” 

Then for the first time she looked at 
Vassel, who had stood somewhat apart. 


PAPOOSE 


167 


“ But/’ she answered, stoutly, “ you were 
first, and I will thank you first.” 

Seizing Morris’s hand, she kissed it. With 
wild cry and exclamation she pillaged the 
place. When all lay revealed to her, she 
turned to the stocking that hung apparently 
as limp and lank as it had the night before. 

Away in its toe was the blue ring! 

“ It is all I could give. Papoose,” said 
Morris. “ Will you wear it ?” 

The price of the weapon that the night 
before he had held at his temple had 
bought it. 

“ Put it on,” she commanded. She held 
out her hand, admiring the effect. “ Oh, 
Morris,” she said, “ aren’t you glad I 
came ?” 

^‘Yes,” he answered; and he shuddered 
as he glanced about the place, and thought 
how different a sight might have been there 
had she not come. 



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“WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 



WOULD DICK DO THAT?' 


T T is positively not to be borne any 
A longer,” said the Colonel, half laugh- 
yet wholly in earnest, as he brought 
down his heavy fist emphatically upon the 
yielding arm of the large chair. 

The Colonel, the Counsellor, and the 
Honorable were seated in that line of chairs 
that bends around the great fireplace in 
the main hall of the Andros Club. Richly 
sober in their upholstery, and dignifiedly 
luxurious in their conformation, these chairs, 
with the small table at the arm of each, 
present an imposing sight, standing equi- 
distant, as they do, about that broad hearth. 
To the imaginative they might easily seem, 
in their comfortable rotundity, a gathering 
about the club fire of some substantial 
elderly gentlemen, ballasted by the con- 
sciousness of money-bags, who have met in 
solemn conclave, communicating with each 


172 WOULD DICK DO THAT ?” 

other in expressive sentences and compre- 
hensive silences. 

Upon their thoughtful faces fell the shift- 
ing light of the wood fire, from which wilful 
and flickering gleams, emissaries to dark- 
ened corners of the hall, ran with hastening 
feet. The place — the unassailable strong- 
hold of masculine independence — is condu- 
cive to confidence. The house had once 
been a private residence. Now it has ex- 
changed the perfume of flowers for the 
scent of cigars, the ripples of ivory keys 
for the click of ivory balls, the laughter of 
young girls for the din of men’s voices, and 
the household character — the accumulated 
meaning that gathers where a family lives — 
for the less significant aspects that have 
existence in places where life is not passed, 
where the real sorrows and joys of human- 
ity do not find dwelling. The time, too, is 
propitious for the business in hand. It is 
that interim between afternoon and even- 
ing — the lazy, the luxurious, \)i\^good quarter 
of an hour before dinner; the space wherein 
affairs and cares should not be suffered to 
obtrude; when anticipatory appetite breeds 
lenient geniality ; when life gathers, in a 


WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 


173 


certain sluggishness, vivacity for what is to 
come. 

The subject had long been increasing in 
gravity with all of us individually, but not 
one had yet had the courage to make any 
mention of it. Each of us knew that the 
other two felt its weight, when we met as 
we did every day at the club for an ante- 
prandial cigar, but no one had hitherto 
broached it. To-day, a short silence, a stare 
passing from one to the other, as the pipe 
passes from hand to hand at an Indian 
council, preceded its open recognition. The 
Honorable first introduced the matter, in 
hesitating, diffident, doubtful speech. Some- 
thing — some new instance of our oppression 
— had probably happened during the day, 
that had goaded him beyond endurance. 
His words fell as the first shower drops fall 
on parched herbage ; expression grew ani- 
mated in our faces, like starting, revivified 
verdure. The Counsellor, as is the wont of 
his kind, insinuated a qualification, a proviso. 
It was stricken out without motion. Then 
the Colonel, as has been seen, emphatically 
instituted the first real proceeding in the 
matter, and sealed it with his fist. Instinc- 


74 


“WOULD DICK DO THAT? 


lively we pulled our chairs slightly out of 
line and closer together, and the affair was 
at last formally, earnestly under considera- 
tion. 

We had been boys together when Andros 
was not the great place it is. Each knew 
the life, the times of the others almost as 
well as his own ; knew the school scrapes 
and the college difficulties into which each 
had fallen ; knew how often each had been 
refused, and by whom ; knew the opportuni- 
ties that had been seized, the chances that 
had been lost; knew the thousand trivial 
incidents of each others daily existence. 
Our pleasures, our troubles, our hopes, our 
likings, our hates, our antipathies, our for- 
bearances, were more or less alike ; our very 
processes of thought were much the same. 
We understood each other thoroughly, feel- 
ing in each other that ease and security that 
perfect sympathy alone can bring. And 
now we, and others like us, were suffering 
from the same grievance — a grievance we 
had all endured for months. But we could 
bear the evil no longer. Action must be 
taken — so said the Colonel, and so said the 


“WOULD DICK DO THAT?’ 


175 


others — action in our own behalf, and in 
behalf of the rest who were unhappy be- 
neath the same burden. 

We had long been, we thought, an im- 
portant part of the community — a circle, of 
the perfection of which we never had doubt. 
It might not be arrogating too much to our- 
selves to say that we and our associates 
formed the good society of the place. No 
sphere in all the spheres had truer radii, such 
quite perfect periphery ; and if ever a circle 
could be squared, none could be so easily 
established in complete rectangularity as 
ours. We had great confidence in our funded 
intelligence, though, to be sure, we carried 
no great amount of small change in the way 
of brilliancy. Good society is in too good 
credit to require it; only the insecure need 
to be amusing. We knew that we were 
more than well off ; but we were not exact- 
ly purse-proud, we were only a little over- 
purse-complacent. Freshly caught wealth, 
unhung and without mellowed flavor, was 
to us rather raw and rank. Ostentation was 
a personal affront ; and yet we would have 
regarded mere ancestral assumption as some- 
thing akin to body-snatching. We were an 


176 “WOULD DICK DO THAT?’' 

amazingly difficult set to satisfy. Possibly 
we had no very fixed views, and were only 
very comfortable complexities of prejudices, 
self-satisfactions, mutual gratulations, unas- 
sertive pretensions, with just enough doubt 
about our own perfectness to make us quite 
apt to be censorious of all things which 
could possibly lead us to any misgiving. 
But such as we were, we were well contented, 
and we desired no change. We ran in deep, 
easy, long-worn grooves, as imperceptibly as 
if upon wheels with rubber tire. 

We were not very gay. Andros was then 
a place where great sprightliness would cer- 
tainly be out of true tone. It might as 
well be confessed that it was provincial ; 
but its provincialism was light, bright, with 
many leavening urbanities. We had not 
fully recognized the rapidity with which its 
affairs had increased, and yet we heard the 
hum of multiplying existence, and could 
not but see the purposeful stir all around 
us. We were of the Bourbon spirit ; the 
old regime, the older order, satisfied us, and 
we did not apprehend a deluge of innova- 
tion, now, or after us. If we did not forget, 
we did not anticipate. We were old fogies, 


“WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 


177 


middle-aged and mediaeval, with no con- 
sciousness of or desire for any renaissance. 
Of course, in our youth, like all others, we 
had been radicals, knew hot-headed dreams, 
and had been beset by impracticable long- ^ 
ings. But the lava of such young years 
had cooled after ebullience, and had stiff- 
ened beneath the gray, ash-bestrewn crust 
of indifference. Not a man of us but had 
already, on some morning, awakened and 
found himself, not famous, but forty. The 
deposits of the tertiary formation are not 
more firmly settled than were we in our 
peculiar social stratification. There had 
been no change for a long time. Alas ! 
we were not students of Heraclitus. We 
had not fathomed the profundity of his 
rather Hibernian aphorism, “ Everything is 
and is not.” 

As will sometimes happen in such some- 
what mature American places, there had not 
been a wedding of any consequence for a 
long time. Had we been given to such in- 
vestigation, we might have been almost led 
to believe in some theory of meteorology, in 
which, with undulatory and periodic sweep, 
sentiment charges the air at long-separated 
12 


I7S “WOULD DICK DO THAT?’' 

periods, and the stagnation in which there is 
no marrying or giving in marriage is, as if 
in elemental change and with atmospheric 
action, suddenly broken up. There had 
^ been no considerable engagement for years ; 
indeed, there were none to become engaged. 
Our children were still young, too young to 
be far enough advanced in their education to 
deal with that problem in mystic mathe- 
matics by which two are made one ; and this 
possibly will better explain the fact that no 
case of such heart failure, or acceleration, had 
occurred for so long. Of course there had 
been marriages in the town, contraction of 
wedlock, connubial starts in life, conjugal be- 
ginnings ; but, it is repeated, there had been 
no weddings worth mentioning, none in that 
important fragment of the world in which 
we were so prominent. “ The felicity of un- 
bounded domesticity” had become with us 
something a matter of course ; the manna 
had ceased to seem a miracle, and was ev- 
ery-day bread. The balance of power was 
finally well established and carefully guard- 
ed ; mutual boundaries were clearly defined 
and rights respected. If something of the 
transport was gone, so was something of 


“WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 179 

the trouble and vexation of spirit. Peace 
reigned ; usage, that beneficent power, had 
fixed everything that could be expected of 
a husband, ordinated whatever a wife might 
ask ; and the edicts, the code of Custom the 
Great, were never broken. Could such 
golden period last? Fatuous men: we 
should have known that mortality could not 
hold such Elysian tract in anything like 
life estate. 

Richard Garrard Fenwick — so his name 
stood on the club list — had been too young 
— he was five years younger than the Hon- 
orable, who was the junior of the other 
two — when the last hymeneal levy had been 
made, and had so escaped the draft. But, 
young and unmarried as he was, he seemed 
as thoroughly our companion as if he wore 
the medals, the crosses, the decorations, of 
a dozen years of matrimonial warfare. He 
served with us on directorial boards ; he 
made one of our number at whist. It was 
only when he dined with us, as he so often 
did, at the house of one or another, that 
we remembered the exceptionality of his 
situation from the necessity of having some 
one in to “ balance the table.” He was one of 


i8o 


“WOULD DICK DO THAT? 


US, naturally, firmly, completely ; and we no 
more thought of possibility of change in him 
than change-in anything else. 

The first warning was as weak, as misun- 
derstood, as disregarded, as first warnings 
usually are — innocent, easy, unalarmed men, 
we knew nothing of its portent. Mrs. Har- 
pending announced that her niece was to 
stay with her for a month of the early win- 
ter. This, it would have seemed to any one, 
was a comparatively insignificant matter, 
certainly nothing to shake able-bodied and 
sound-minded gentlemen with alarm, and, 
in fact, we gave no particular heed to it. 
We felt no trepidation ; we received the 
statement with something even like delight. 
The thought of having a bright, pretty girl 
about was not unpleasing. But if such was 
our perhaps pardonable obtuseness then, 
what can extenuate our crass stupidity when 
we were not panic-stricken upon the first 
appearance of Miss Edith Armistead her- 
self? The event took place at a small din- 
ner given by the unapprehensive Colonel, 
absolutely in the young lady’s honor. Old 
idiots that we were, we must have lost our 
heads as well as our hearts before she had 


‘'WOULD DICK DO THAT?” i8i 

walked half across the room, as she did, 
gracefully rigid in her slim erectness, for 
she was so young that she still carried her- 
self with a certain charming self-conscious- 
ness. We were her slaves from that moment 
— metaphorically prostrate at her long, nar- 
row, glittering shoes. We were wholly with- 
out alarm. There was a piquancy in her 
prettiness that won us towards her; there 
was a charm in her gracious hesitancy of 
manner that captivated us ; and after the 
dinner we chatted on to each other about 
her with a sort of semi-senile garrulity. We 
did not notice it at the time, but Fenwick 
sat at the table unusually silent. In the 
drawing-room, after dinner, we surrounded 
her, claimed with selfish effrontery every 
word that fell from her lips, and appropri- 
ated every glance of her bright young eyes, 
so that he could not speak to her. Fen- 
wick had no opportunity during the entire 
evening to approach her ; but when the 
time came for the Harpendings to go, he 
quite annoyed us by happening to be in 
the hall and going with them to their car- 
riage. Even then — perhaps over-tickled van- 
ity was to blame — not a man of us was 
stricken with terror. 


i 82 


'‘WOULD DICK DO THAT? 


We all wanted the young stranger to 
have a good time ; and in our middle-aged 
way we did all we could for her. We each 
of us gave her a dinner; and the Colonel, in 
his hot-headed fashion, got up what he 
called a dance for her. She looked radiant, 
and she assured us, in her pretty, emphatic 
way, that she had enjoyed herself immensely ; 
but, in looking back on the affair, I am afraid 
that the gayety was dismal, the delight too 
decorous for her. Of course Fenwick was 
in everything that was going on. He was 
our only young man, and we made the 
most of him. The reckless way in which 
those young persons were thrown together 
was something without parallel in the long 
annals of human fatuity. Why, we favored 
it ; brought it about ; delighted in it ! Of 
course we knew what was going forward ; 
we even thought we were clever to find it 
out. We knew how all would end ; we 
believed we were profound in making that 
discover}^ Each of us felt as if he hr.d 
part and lot in the matter himself. We 
saw them walking briskly up the avenue . in 
the brilliant, opalescent, autumn afternoons ; 
we saw them sitting, suddenly silent, in the 


WOULD DICK DO THAT?’ 


183 


(C 


early twilights of the winter evenings, be- 
fore the glowing grate ; we saw them talking 
in low tone, away from every brazen glare 
of light, in the nights of the holidays; 
and we grew sentimental, and thought of 
our own long-ago wooings and doings; and 
in eager but concealed earnestness revelled 
expansively in the recollection of long -un- 
remembered incidents. The Colonel, coming 
upon the girl quite unexpectedly as she 
stood upon the Harpending stairway, giving 
Fenwick a rose from those which lay be- 
side her plate at dinner, remembered how, 
years before, a bunch of violets had been 
dropped to him over that very balustrade, 
and telegraphed the next morning for the 
brougham which only the day before he had 
declared would be a useless extravagance. 
The milk of human kindness was very rich 
just then, and there mantled upon it the 
cream of large-hearted sympathy. We part- 
ly lived in one of those provinces where 
time and space seem held suspended, each 
in a sort of incomprehensible solution of 
the other, and where all material things 
are shadowless. We were then witless deni- 
zens of a region of belated romance ; and 


i 84 “ WOULD DICK DO TPIAT ?’' 

all this time not a man of us trembled 
in definite or even indefinite apprehension. 

In due time the engagement was announced. 
Everybody was satisfied ; everybody approved. 
He was well-born, well-featured, well-man- 
nered, and more than well-to-do ; and she 
was of good birth, good-breeding, and much 
more than good looks. We gave her con- 
gratulations, and we gave her flowers. We 
were delighted that we were to have one so 
fresh, so cheery, so bright, so graceful, so 
beautiful, always with us, for of course they 
would live in the great house on the avenue, 
that had looked so dull, so desolate, so like a 
prison in which old pleasures were serving out 
life-sentences, ever since the death of Fen- 
wick’s grandfather. 

It was not a long betrothment. 

One bright spring morning the chimes of 
old St. Barnabas’s — the old church which the 
town, in its growth marching away, had left 
in the heart of the business quarter — rang 
gayly over the busy streets ; and victorias 
and coupes filled with festal-clad occupants 
struggled through cars and carts and wagons 
and vans, and crushed around the main en- 
trance of the church, the very drivers good- 


“WOULD DICK DO THAT?’' 185 

humored in the joy of the occasion. And 
then, as the noonday sun fell in purple 
splendor through the stained glass, Dr. 
Quartle, who had married all of us and 
baptized the most of us, pronounced the 
final solemn words — hardly second in their 
import and consequence to the last requiem 
CBternain^ for beneath them two lives are 
ended and two lives begun — “Those whom 
God hath joined together let no man put 
asunder.” 

We loaded the bride with presents. No 
artfulness could have exceeded that with 
which we concealed from each other what 
we were to do in that line, for — there was 
more meanness than magnanimity in the 
business — each desired to excel the others. 
We came out at the wedding breakfast in 
surprising strength. The Colonel especially 
was effusive, positive, globose, glorious, in 
style and gesture. 

They went to Europe for a wedding trip, 
and were gone three months. We were un- 
affectedly glad to see them on their return, 
and we made their home-coming something 
of an ovation. Even then there was no fore- 
boding of the trouble to come ; but as time 


i86 “WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 

passed, and we began to return to the old 
routine of our lives, which before had been 
no more the subject of thought than the 
constituents of the atmosphere, a stealthy 
shadow, a dissatisfying suspicion, a jar as if 
something had fallen into our grooves, and 
the wheels of habit struck obstructing nov- 
elty — all these commingled beset us and 
played the Incarnation of Evil with us. The 
Honorable, it was observed, broke off in a 
lucky run at cards and went home at eleven 
o’clock ; the Counsellor now rarely took the 
club in his way when he went to dinner; 
and when the Colonel, in a high hat, was 
caught one Sunday morning as he was be- 
ing quietly led to church, it was plain to the 
meanest understanding that some powerful 
influence was at work. It was a surprise, a 
shock. We groped blindly for the cause of 
such disturbances, and we found it. The 
discovery came about, like other great dis- 
coveries, by accident. In the lobby of a 
theatre one evening, between the acts, the 
Honorable fell into interesting discussion 
with the Editor, and left Mrs. Honorable 
alone some time, while the play went on. 
He had scarcely taken his seat by her side 


WOULD DICK DO THAT?’ 


187 


<< 


again, when he was met by the inquiry, 
“Would Dick do that?” 

It was a simple thing, but it was all-suffi- 
cient. We had heard those innocent words 
in that deadly collocation before. We un- 
derstood. 

We had cultivated a poisonous exotic ; 
we had nourished a viper ; we had created a 
Frankenstein that had turned and would 
rend us. Would Dick do this, that, or the 
other thing? We heard it at every turn. 
Of course he wouldn’t ; and what were we 
to say? To urge that Dick hadn’t been 
married a year, to plead a sort of reversed 
statute of limitation,was something instantly 
overruled as utterly irrelevant ; and though 
in our blundering way we thought it suffi- 
cient, there was a lingering, instinctive logic 
about us that did make it seem not the most 
tenable thing in the world. We dared not 
raise any personal point ; it would be con- 
tempt of every high’ tribunal that tried us. 
We were powerless, answerless, and without 
effective defence. 

“ Would Dick do that ?” It was a sort 
of indirect blackmail. The whole structure 
of our habitual existence was attacked ; the 


i88 “WOULD DICK DO THAT?’' 

usages of ripened lifetimes were threatened. 
We were to abandon the second or third 
nature that we had so sensibly acquired, and 
try back for a left-off something, a never so- 
ber reality, with which we had had nothing 
to do for many years. Security was gone ; 
peace might be destroyed. And all this be- 
cause a young man w'as glad to make a fool 
of himself about a young woman. Richard 
Garrard Fenwick might be regarded as some- 
thing approaching a public nuisance, and, in 
objectionable feature, to be abated. We 
came to look upon him as something of a 
traitor; but I doubt if he ever noticed our 
coolness— blind, deluded youngster. What 
was to be done? Of such example an ex- 
ample must be made. We sat upon the 
question that memorable afternoon, for to 
the proposition that something had to be 
done there was not a dissenting voice. We 
felt outraged, betrayed, trapped ; and were 
ready for immediate action. 

“Got a cigar?” asked the Counsellor, ab- 
ruptly. As no one had, he rang, the order was 
given, and the servant returned with three 
boxes — our respective well-known choices. 


WOULD DICK DO THAT?’ 


(( 


>> 

189 


The Counsellor took his cigar determined- 
ly, the Honorable his thoughtfully ; the hand 
of the Colonel was stayed when half put 
forth. We stared. 

“ Does Dick — ” began the Counsellor. 

The Colonel actually blushed. “By Chris- 
topher!” he ejaculated, interrupting him, and 
fulminating his every-day, working oath,“ I’ll 
smoke enough in the next twenty-four hours 
to make up for the week I’ve left off.” 

Silence for three minutes. The Colonel 
smoked grimly ; the Counsellor, as if saga- 
ciously getting up something like statistics 
of the precise situation ; the Honorable, with 
a far-away look. 

“ If we only,” began the Honorable, hesi- 
tating, as if he had brought the idea from 
the very confines of human intelligence — “ if 
we only could bring him back to any of hjs 
old ways !” 

“ Do you think,” said the Colonel, “ that 
we could do anything?” 

“ Perhaps,” said the Honorable. 

“ What ?” asked the Counsellor, in the 
tone of a man who foresees easy overthrow 
of impossible propositions. 

“ Suppose — ” began the Honorable. 


igo “WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 

“ Suppose !” said the Colonel, imperative- 
ly. “ Don’t suppose — propose.” 

“What would you say,” began the Hon- 
orable, with none of that impossible bold- 
ness that the Colonel demanded, “ to our in- 
viting him, one after another, to dinner at 
the club ?” 

And the Colonel brought down his fist 
upon his knee — smote himself, as did Sam- 
son the Philistines, hip and thigh — and de- 
clared that if the thing could be done, the 
evil would be as the rended lion, its carcass 
filled with a swarm of bees and honey, or 
words to that effect. 

“ But suppose we should ask him and he 
wouldn’t come ?” 

A sudden gloom fell on the company. 

“ Suppose the moon declined to keep its 
appointment when there was an eclipse of 
the sun to come off,” said the Colonel, scorn- 
fully. “Do you suppose that Dick Fenwick 
is a man who is going to disturb harmony, 
keep clear of every attraction, escape every 
force that has kept us together so long?” 

“Who shall begin?” said the Counsellor 
abruptly. 

“ You,” said the Colonel. 


WOULD DICK DO THAT? 


i6 


M 

191 


No,” said the Counsellor. Let the dis- 
coverer of the remedy have the honor of the 
initiative.” 

Well, if it must be,” replied the Honor- 
able. 

And so it was settled, and so the unholy 
league was formed. Each of us, as we slunk 
out of the club that night, felt as if he had 
detected himself in rather a small conspir- 
acy. But what could we do ? In the midst 
of an asparagus bed, where, out of rich foun- 
dation, and after years of cultivation, the 
succulent shoots thrust up their heads, 
thick - necked, in luxurious promise, there 
had sprung up the evil growth that shook 
over all its delicate and deadly blossoms. 

The invitation was given, and, much to 
our surprise, was quickly accepted. We 
were exultant. When the Honorable, the 
next morning, casually announced at his. 
breakfast - table, and from behind the ram- 
part of the morning paper, that he was go- 
ing to dine at the club, he was^ met by a 
chilly glance that usually would have intimi- 
dated him ; but when he carelessly added, 

“ Oh, Dick’s to be there too,” he looked 
over the printed escarpment upon an aston- 


192 “WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 

ished, demoralized, and completely routed 
force. 

But though the evening came, Fenwick 
did not. A note arrived at the last moment, 
while we stood dumbly waiting, simply say- 
ing- that he was kept by an urgent mat- 
ter, and apologizing for his absence. The 
effect was instantaneous, and it was striking. 
As the letter was read, a sudden depression 
fell upon us. Nothing could so quickly 
have made three such men so distinctly 
hypocrites. The Counsellor’s hilarity was 
thin ; the airiness of the Colonel was sin- 
gularly rarefied; the Honorable’s vivacity, 
diaphanous. 

“ But we will have our dinner,” each ejac- 
ulated, without heart, however, in the dec- 
laration. After it was made, the Colonel 
seemed shrunken, discouraged ; the Coun- 
sellor dwindled, doubtful ; the Honorable 
collapsed, disconsolate. 

The thing was a pitiful failure — three im- 
becile shams, three idiotic pretenders, taking 
a meal; that was all. We praised a wine 
while we silently condemned Fenwick. We 
found fault with a plat as we thought of the 
future. Our laughter at old jokes came al- 


“WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 


193 


most as harsh, tomtom sounds in celebration 
of their funerals. We cackled a fusillade of 
cachinnations in salute to new ones, as if 
those of which we had been fond for years 
were as nothing in comparison. The Hon- 
orable drank a little too much wine, and was 
loquacious ; the Colonel ate too little, and 
was silent ; the Counsellor distinctly re- 
frained from doing either, and his usual 
doubts and dubitations ran into captious- 
ness and disputation. And if in Fenwick’s 
unoccupied chair there did not plainly sit 
all the time a silently upbraiding ghost, clad 
in a fog -dampened mourning veil, it was 
because outraged domesticity is not a per- 
sonifiable quality. However, there was 
something in the nothing before us won- 
derfully potent and depressing. The affair 
came to a sudden and infestive end. We 
parted in gloom, and took our separate 
ways home, 

“And bitterly thought of the morrow.” 

The next afternoon we met at the club 
as usual. If former meetings had been de- 
spondent, this was despairing. 

“ Well?” asked the Colonel. 

13 


194 


“WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 


“ I didn’t happen to mention it at home 
that Fenwick didn’t come,” confessed the 
Honorable. 

“ Nor I,” said the Counsellor. 

“Nor I,” growled the Colonel. 

Profound silence fell around us heavily, 
like lowered sails, like dropped curtains. 
The great wood fire crackled impudently, 
with aggravating cheerfulness. 

“What’s to be done?” was stared and 
spoken. 

“ Wait, and try again,” said the Colonel, 
stubbornly. 

“ It’s your turn next,” said the Honor- 
able to the Counsellor. 

For the next few days we were pitiable 
objects. We were moody, testy, often fidg- 
ety, frequently stolid, all the time unfit for 
sensible occupation. We aimlessly wan- 
dered to the club at unusual hours, as beset 
people visit the scenes of their crimes and 
misfortunes. There sprang up a slight 
something like antipathy towards each other, 
for there is, after all, recognized dishonor 
among small complotters; we felt a new 
and guilty liking for each other, for there is 
sympathy between even petty malefactors. 


WOULD DICK DO THAT?' 


19$ 


li 


But declension in evil is swift, and calamity 
comes as the whirlwind. 

We awaited Fenwick’s answer to the Coun- 
sellor’s invitation with more than anxiety. 
For a whole day and a half no reply came. 
We exulted over a favorable response with 
a feeling for which we despised ourselves. 
Again the night came, but again no Fen- 
wick ; only a note expressing a pressing 
urgency and a regret. We were alarmed, 
intimidated. Richard Garrard Fenwick was 
the very pink of punctiliousness, and yet he 
had disposed of us, dispensed with the Coun- 
sellor’s dinner, with mere phraseology worn 
so thin as to have lost all meaning. But we 
choked down our wrath and our fears, and 
we choked down our dinner. There was 
not even a pretence of hilarity. We almost 
growled, in our general ill-temper, at each 
other, and were afterwards guilty of apologet- 
ic tones, which should have been worse af- 
fronts than the words they sought to soften. 

We had not told our wives of Fenwick’s 
second absence. In not telling the whole 
truth to the partners of our souls and leav- 
ing all to their generous remedy, we were 
husband-like, and we made a great mistake. 


196 ‘'WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 

Alas, we know it now ! When we expati- 
ated upon the delights of the two dinners, 
those ladies displayed an indifference which 
would have ruffled the equable temper of 
Mephistopheles and broken the placidity 
of Melancthon. We grew spiritless, apa- 
thetic. Were our homes to be destroyed by 
this thing? Were there even to be no more 
pleasant, inspiriting matrimonial differences? 
Were we to be of such little consequence 
as to be incapable of exciting even feminine 
. curiosity? 

“ We’ve gone too far,” said the Colonel, 
at our customary conclave, “ to give up. 
We must fight it out on this line if it takes 
all winter. I’ll ask him to dinner myself. 
If he don’t come — ” The Colonel paused. 
His imagination is not vivid. It is a thick- 
set, rather solid faculty ; but when it sees 
anything, it sees it plain, and the vision now 
before his mind’s eye was evidently one 
that killed expression. 

“ We must strike for our whist -table and 
our club fire,” said the Counsellor. 

“ Each shall otherwise be as the family 
cat, without the privilege of nocturnal ab- 
sence,” said the Honorable. 


WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 


197 


We made this last effort with the inward 
fear that belongs to desperate attempts. 
We risked a great deal on the issue. Our 
peace abroad and our security at home de- 
pended upon it. Success was of vital im- 
portance, and we did everything to insure 
it. The Colonel sent a written invitation ; 
the others had been verbal. I think that 
if Fenwick had declined it, we would almost 
have felt relief, to such tension had our 
nerves been brought. But he accepted it, 
and his acceptance carried consternation. 
Now had the crucial time come. This sort 
of thing could not go on forever; if on this 
occasion he did not appear in person, our 
threefold duplicity must destroy us. We 
fell in that innocent man’s way, forced from 
him expressions in which were implied 
promises that he would certainly dine with 
us this time. We lured him on with de- 
scriptions of what we were to expect, which 
were to the succinct statements of a menu 
as Swinburne is to Crabbe. 

Then came the eventful evening. 

“ I haven’t heard a word yet,” said the 
Colonel, in a low tone, but with assuring in- 
tensity as he shook each of us by the hand. 


igS “WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 

And there we stood, three perturbed men, 
trustful and yet afraid. 

Five minutes of seven. Fenwick certainly 
would not fail us now. 

Every considerable city has its peculiar 
feature, its own special aspect. Rotten Row 
on a bright afternoon of the hot and hurried 
season ; the Boulevard des Italiens on some 
spacious, starry night, when the cosmopol- 
itan crowd saunters along with lingering 
steps; Fifth Avenue upon a Sunday noon 
of April, when lagging thousands stroll 
and stare ; Pennsylvania Avenue at eleven 
o’clock in the morning of a bright Janu- 
ary day, when more marked and really 
representative men are scattered along the 
walks than in any other such place at any 
usual time — these are instances of places and 
scenes, each with special characteristics and 
significance wholly its own. To our great 
Northern cities, however, there belongs one 
distinctively brilliant display that has not 
gained the fame it deserves, and which in 
brightness, animation, and inspiriting in- 
fluence will hold its own in the widest com- 
parison. In none does it find more spark- 


WOULD DICK DO THAT?’ 


199 


it 


ling, enlivening, effective presentation than 
in Andros. Alaska Avenue on a winter 
afternoon, when the snow has fallen and the 
sleighing is good, is as characteristic as any 
sight the world knows. The day should be 
clear, brilliant, cold, and still. The snow 
should be deep, but not too deep, and packed 
along the driveway until it is as a softer ice, 
as an easily malleable silver, a little chased 
and fretted, and striped as if etched with in- 
termixing lines. The time should be about 
four o’clock in the afternoon. Then along 
the broad street, where stand on either side, 
block after block, stately houses giving as- 
surance of the warmth, the soft light, the 
luxuriousness within, move up and down 
crowding sleighs in double rows ; gay Russian 
sledges, with streamers flying as the horse- 
tails that Sobieski captured flashed before 
Vienna ; staid old family affairs, large and 
comfortable, and all crowded with humanity; 
these overflowing with children, those filled 
with young girls — their beauty brightened, 
burnished, by the clear air — laughing and 
eager. Furs seem to boil over the edges of 
the sleighs, to flow behind them, as though 
they were ripples — racing wakes in the slow- 


200 


'‘WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 


moving current. It is a glorious pageant, a 
striking spectacle, a quick, changing, glitter- 
ing, scintillant scene, charged with strong 
vitality. Between the counter - moving 
streams on either side of the street dash, in 
hardly intermittent flight, “cutters ” wonder- 
ful in their spidery anatomy, torn along by 
high-couraged, deep -lunged, clean-limbed 
horses — trotters such as might chip atoms of 
seconds off what was thought a great record 
in the not remote past. This is the electric 
current, these the constant flashes that thrill 
everything, start the heart’s beat, suffuse 
the cheeks, quicken the pulse, stir the 
nerves. And the cheery din, the hum that 
is everywhere, the bells jingling in the tam- 
bourine to which the minutes dance, the 
whir of the rushing cutters, the cries, the 
yells to the horses, the “ Take care theres !” 
the “Get out of the ways!” the hurrahs, the 
shouts of the on-looking crowd — all these, 
mingled, are among the causes that give 
gayety, glee, hilarity, to the time. Har- 
nesses sparkle; the varnished sleighs shine 
like great beetles. Shadows gather in deep- 
er blue across the snow; the windows of the 
west-facing houses blaze in vermilion glory. 


WOULD DICK DO THAT?’ 


201 


(( 


Inspiriting sound, quickening motion, every- 
thing is intensified by the consciousness ali 
have of vivid, human presence. 

Everybody was “out.’’ The Colonel was 
there with a great raw-boned, ewe-necked 
animal called Lucifer, the very ideal of 
equine ugliness, but which, though “awk- 
ward at startin’,” as the groom said, when 
once off, flung, seemed to scatter, those large 
hoofs of his quicker, farther along the road, 
than most, if not all, of those who tried speed 
with him. The Honorable was there with 
a nervous little bay, able almost always to 
“hang” pertinaciously upon the rear of al- 
most “ anything going,” and often, and in 
contest with those among the best, to show 
neatly and clearly ahead. The Counsellor 
was behind a well-tried, long-trusted gray 
that always did well, and sometimes did won- 
ders. These were all old favorites — fore- 
most in estimation among perhaps fifty 
others, with many of whom they had been 
or would be, in the course of the afternoon, 
called upon or compelled to compete. But 
on this particular occasion there was prom- 
ise of something new and of exceptional 
interest. It was understood that Fenwick 


202 


“WOULD DICK DO THAT?’ 


was to bring out a new horse raised at his 
own country place, and of which we all had 
heard not a little. The Colonel, who had 
all winter “led the avenue,” feared that even 
Lucifer would have to take second place, 
when Hoyden should flash, as if on the 
swallow’s wing, along the course. Interest 
rose to excitement almost, as the afternoon 
ran along and Fenwick did not appear. 

“Why don’t he come?” growled the 
Colonel, walking the steaming Lucifer, after 
a victorious burst of half a mile, as the 
cutter of the Honorable and his bay drew 
abreast. “Is he waiting until our horses 
are tired out?” 

“Would Dick do—” 

One vicious cut across Lucifer’s flank, 
and the Colonel was off, his horse in a canter 
for half a block; and when we reached the 
end of the course, there was the Colonel 
grimly waiting for us. We were just get- 
ting into irregular line, when there was a 
shout, “There he is!” 

Hoyden looked perfection in build and 
action. Nothing with keener vitality ever 
ran or flew. She appeared eager for what 
was before her, to know it all at view, as a 


WOULD DICK DO THAT?' 


203 


(( 


young girl knows her first ball, a youngster 
his first battle. Behind the mare sat, in a 
nautilus of a cutter, Richard Garrard Fen- 
wick, calm as a conjurer, innocent as a 
hotel clerk. Every one of us knew at a 
glance what was to come ; every horse 
seemed to feel it. We were all silent. Ev- 
ery energy must be put forth; not a turn 
of skill lost. Even Hoyden seemed im- 
pressed and quieted by the importance of 
what was to be done. She glided into line 
as mademoiselle takes her place in her first 
cotillon. 

And then — no spoken signal was given 
— our hearts seemed simultaneously to leap 
in response to some unuttered “Go,” and 
we were away. 

There is something peculiarly exciting in 
a race over the snow. The white lies all 
around, objectless almost as is the atmos- 
phere, and you seem to fly over it and 
through mere space. Silently, with only 
the chiming bells and quick breathing of 
the panting horses in your ears, you are 
borne along through the cutting blast, 
giddy with the motion. You drink the 
air, and it is as champagne poured from 


204 


“WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 

out the bottle lined with its thin ice incrus- 
tation. You are gladdened, inflamed, by 
the zest of contest. 

The course on the avenue from start to 
finish is a little more than a mile long. The 
Colonel had a slight lead at starting; the 
Honorable and the Counsellor were side by 
side, with Fenwick almost a length behind. 
At Omicron Street the positions were 
hardly changed ; but before the next block 
was passed, Fenwick was even with the 
Honorable and the Counsellor. The speed 
was terrific. The rows of sleighs lost form 
and detail in one blurred blending ; they 
ran behind us on either side like bright- 
colored ribbons. The snow flew from the 
quick hoofs in blinding clouds into our 
faces. Cheers grew before us, softened be- 
hind us, as we came on. All in the track 
"made way for us, and, after we had passed, 
pulled up, and gazed after us; all made 
way — and yet, veteran of the course as the 
Honorable was, his cutter just grazed the 
pole of the huge Harpending sleigh, pro- 
jected a little out of the line. 

At Omega Street Fenwick had passed 
the Honorable and the Counsellor, and to 


“WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 205 

them the race was lost. But Lucifer was 
still ahead. There had not been a “break” 
yet. The peculiar, regular action which 
makes the fast trotter appear impelled by 
some nicely adjusted, perfectly regulated 
mechanism — the motion that suggests the 
strong walking-beam, the quick hair-spring, 
rather than the action of less regular, more 
unreliable muscle — had not been disturbed 
in either horse. Hoyden was gaining. How 
the Colonel knew this it is hard to say, for 
he did not turn his head. He can distin- 
guish no significant word in the wild hulla- 
baloo around him. But he does know it, and 
he bends further forward, and, for the first 
time since the start, Lucifer feels, but feels 
lightly, the lash. Now Hoyden’s nostrils 
glow and quiver at the Colonel’s elbow ; 
now flecks of foam are cast across his ex- 
tended, rigid arms ; now the mare’s small, 
clear-lined head reaches beyond his cut- 
ter, and it is evident that the horses will 
soon be neck and neck. They are nearing 
the finish, the place where, at the crossing 
of Iroquois and Alaska avenues, there is a 
small circle. Here the crowd is the densest, 
the confusion the greatest. The sleighs scat- 


206 


“ WOULD DICK DO THAT ? 


ter right and left, that the opening may 
be wider; those on foot — and there are 
many here — press forward, that they may 
miss nothing of the end. Is Hoyden up 
with Lucifer? Is she? It would need the 
two parallel wires to tell that as they sweep 
on. The Colonel is almost lying on the 
dash-board. But desperation has snatched 
victory before now. The Colonel slightly 
rises in his seat ; the whip has further reach ; 
he shouts to Lucifer as if he hated the 
beast; and — But it is too much ; Lucifer 
can do no more. He breaks — breaks badly 
— and Hoyden, excited — for there is known 
to her now but the one thing, speed — flies 
past and into the circle, still at racing pace. 
A large sleigh, heavily loaded with coal, 
that never should have been allowed in such 
a place, has ploughed its slow way along 
Iroquois Avenue, and now has almost 
crossed Alaska. It is almost past; but 
there is a cry of terror — a cra*sh — a crowd’s 
awful articulation; the beautiful mare gal- 
lops on alone with flying traces. And there, 
on the snow, lies Fenwick, motionless, a clot 
of blood on his white forehead. 


“WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 207 

If, as has been said with an iteration that, 
though it deprives the simile of the merit 
of novelty, certainly gives it the respectabil- 
ity of usage, we are all actors in this life, 
we are ^assuredly like the players in Hamlet, 
“ the best actors in the world, either for 
tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral- 
comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-histori- 
cal, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral.” We 
can play all and everything, and we do it. 
But the worst of it is that the world is 
stocked with such a miserable, makeshift 
company that we have often to “ double ” 
our parts — as it were playing the ghost and 
the grave-digger in the same evening. No 
more “ lightning change ” from the sock to 
the cothurn was ever made in life’s drama 
than our small company made that wintry 
afternoon. 

Fenwick had been unconscious ever since 
he had been hurled on the hard, ice-covered 
asphalt, and the Doctor could not or would 
not say how dangerous the injury was. We 
all, in some inexplicable way, felt responsible 
for the accident. As we carried him up 
the wide steps of his own house, his eyes 
were closed, and his limbs, uncontrolled 


203 


WOULD DICK DO THAT? 


by volition, seemed to fall with added 
weight. How could we face the young wife 
against whom we had been plotting? As we 
entered the door, “ Miss Edith” — we had al- 
ways called her “Miss Edith,” even after her 
marriage — came down the stairs with quick, 
gliding step. She uttered a sudden, startled 
cry, and was by his side in an instant. 

“Here,” she said; and we placed him on 
the great couch beside the big hall fire-place. 
She had fallen on her knees, and taken one 
of his limp, cold hands in both of hers. 

“ Will he die?” she asked, in a whisper. 

The Doctor affected not to hear her. 

“And,” she moaned, “when he went 
away I was angry with him, and he with 
me, and I have not seen him since !” 

Fenwick never looked so handsome as he 
did lying there, his face pallid, with illu- 
minating blood-marks, and his white, flaccid 
hands resting upon the great fur rug. 

“ Why did you ask him to your cruel 
dinner?” 

The thumb-screw of remorse was given a 
new turn. It was about our dinner they 
had had their quarrel, perhaps their first. 

“ But he didn’t go,” blurted out the 


“WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 209 

Colonel, in his eagerness to make amends 
for our action. 

“ Didn’t go !” she repeated, softly. “ But 
what did he do ? I did not see him.” 

We were dazed, bewildered ; the basis of 
our calculations destroyed; the premises of 
our conclusions swept away. 

“He must have been very, very angry, 
then,” she continued. “ I didn’t like to have 
him go to the others, and he did not. At 
the last minute, I wanted him so much not 
to go to this too, because it was the anni- 
versary of the day we first saw each other ; 
but he said he must, because he had refused 
the others. And I insisted, and he — ” She 
bowed her head in silence over his hand. 
“ It was our first real trouble,” she said, 
looking up ; “ and now — and now we can 
never make it up.” 

The homely phrase struck at our heart : 
“make it up.” There Fenwick lay, with 
motionless body and obstructed brain, in- 
capable of action ; unable perhaps forever 
to give even that pressure of the hand, or 
utter the one simple word that might mean 
reconciliation, and without which parting 
would be made so much the harder. And 


210 “WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 

we were partly to blame for it all. In the 
light of our responsibility, “Miss Edith’s” 
grief was almost unbearable, and we would 
gladly have departed, but some sense of 
atonement held us chained to the . spot. 

“Will he not speak for a moment?” she 
went on, turning again to the Doctor. 

But no warmth appeared in the pallid 
face, no gleam of intelligence shone in 
those staring eyes. 

The gas-lights were just springing to life 
along the darkening avenue ; at rare inter- 
vals came the jingle of sleigh-bells. The 
revellers of the afternoon had departed, and 
the street was almost deserted. It was an 
hour such as none of the party assembled 
had ever passed, but so personal and absorb- 
ing were the interests that none at the time 
realized its dramatic intensity. Minute after 
minute we stood waiting for those pale lips, 
that might soon stiffen into immobility, to 
utter some intelligible word. 

It was hardly articulate. Was it a sudden 
exclamation ? Was it a hysterical laugh ? 

Fenwick wearily rose upon his elbow and 
looked around. “ Hello !” he said. “Edith! 
Why, what has happened ?” 


“WOULD DICK DO THAT?’ 


2II 


“ Lie down,” she said, gently. “You must. 
You have been hurt.” 

“ I remember,” he said, less faintly — “ the 
race. Did I beat the Colonel?” 

“Yes, dear,” she answered. “But you 
must be quite still.” 

Fenwick was not dead; on the contrary, 
very much alive. How joyfully our guilty 
hearts beat in their unshackled freedom ! 

“ Oh, Dick,” she said, “if anything should 
have happened! Do you remember? Will 
you forgive me ?” 

Without the impassiveness, but with all 
the intrusiveness, of a Greek chorus, the 
abashed and conscience-stricken conspirators 
gazed upon the scene. 

“Forgive you?” he said. “I acted like 
a brute. What did I care for their dinner ? 
But I was ashamed of myself afterwards, sent 
a note to say that I could not come, and 
came back to find you gone.” 

“ I know,” she said, remorsefully ; “ you 
left me alone, and I was very indignant, and 
I went to the Harpendings’. I am so sorry!” 

“ I shut myself up in the smoking-room, 
and slept there until two o’clock. You did 
not come down this morning, and so — ” 


212 


‘'WOULD DICK DO THAT? 


“ Oh, Dick ! if you had never been able 
to tell me !” she cried. “ I shall never let 
you go away when you are angry again.” 

Though neither “ Dick ” nor “ Miss Edith” 
knew that we were present, one by one we 
stole quietly from the room. 

The next day we called upon Mrs. Rich- 
ard Garrard Fenwick in a body, and formally 
and frankly “ owned up.” 

“ And you never have told that he did 
not come?” she said. 

“ No,” we answered, contritely. 

“ That was very wrong.’ 

We tried to explain. 

“Would Dick do that?” she asked, re- 
provingly. 

We all shuddered. 

“And others must believe that three — 
three — ” 

“ Old fools,” suggested the Colonel. 

“Middle-aged gentlemen,” continued 
“ Miss Edith,” politely, “ were able to lead 
Dick away ?” 

We appeared dubious. 

“ Must I sacrifice my pride in order that 
you may escape ?” 


“WOULD DICK DO THAT?” 213 

We gazed at her entreatingly. 

“You have all,” she said, severely, “ been 
very thoughtless and wicked ; but I will never 
tell, if you promise never to do anything 
like it again.” 

We assured her, with a vehemence that 
could not but carry conviction of our sin- 
cerity, that we would not. 

“ Then,” she said, “ I forgive you.” 

She had wound us around her slim white 
fingers long before ; now she has us under 
her rosy thumb. But she uses her power 
mercifully. It is a question whether we do 
not wish that she was more exacting, so glad 
are we of an opportunity to do anything 
for her. 



THE DRAGONESS” 





THE DRAGONESS 


I 

T3 EALLY,” said Mrs. Abernethy, help- 
X V lessly, as she sat at the dinner-table 
one evening, so long after Christmas that the 
character of the winter could be definitely 
determined as decidedly “ gay,” but yet so 
far removed from Lent that many events of 
importance were still to come off, and there 
was much that might make anticipation 
vivid, I doiiT know what I am to do about 
Ruth. If we go South next week,” she 
continued, gazing at so much of her hus- 
band as was visible through the spaces 
left by the intervening objects, “ I cannot, 
worn out as I am, undertake to look after her 
in St. Augustine, and I am sure I don’t see 
how we can leave her here.” 

Oh,” said Abernethy, with a certain after- 
dinner indifference, ‘‘ she’d do well enough. 
I’ve no doubt, if she stayed in the house all 
Mone.” 


2I8 


“ THE DRAGONESS 


“But think how highly improper!” ex- 
claimed Mrs. Abernethy, thoroughly shocked ; 
“ she certainly must have some older person 
with her. She is so thoughtless; and there 
is Mrs. ‘ Tom ’ ; and then there is Harold 
Redmond.” 

Abernethy nodded abstractedly. He had 
already, and it was only Thursday, used up 
the three excuses that regularly gave him 
three nights a week at the club, and was 
very busy trying to devise some scheme 
that might serve to give him freedom on 
this evening as well. As he was not an 
imaginative man, he was having rather a 
hard time of it. 

“ I cannot think of any, one,” went on 
Mrs. Abernethy, not conscious of her hus- 
band’s extraordinary mental efforts. “ I 
wouldn’t mind if Andros was the place that 
it used to be, but it has changed so that 
you never can tell what is going to happen. 
Since Mrs. ‘Tom’ Dallison and the fast set 
have sprung up, I consider that society has 
very much deteriorated. Think how differ- 
ent it once was 1” 

“ In the dark ages,” said her husband. 

“You may call them the dark ages if you 


THE DRAGONESS ” 


219 


i( 


like, but society was respectable then at 
least. I consider that Mrs. Dallison has 
been a most evil influence. Of course we 
cannot do anything, for she was Virginia 
Rereton, and we were all most intimate with 
her dear mother. But if she were not a 
Rereton I certainly would not receive her; 
and I often wonder how that little girl, 
whom I can remember perfectly as the qui- 
etest, shyest little thing, can have become 
the fast, absolutely fast, woman she is.” 

“ Oh, come, now ; everything makes faster 
time than it used to do, from horses and 
ocean liners to — ” 

‘‘She need not be so excessive,” said Mrs. 
Abernethy, decidedly. “ I have been always 
opposed to letting Ruth have anything to 
do with her, and have steadily discouraged 
the intimacy.” 

Abernethy said nothing. 

“ But this doesn’t help me to determine 
what I am to do with Ruth. I wish every 
day that she hadn’t been left in my care. 
Poor Fanny might have made Clara her 
guardian ; perhaps she might know how to 
manage a young woman that was miaiicip^e 
and an heiress.” 


220 


THE DRAGONESS 


>» 


“ Why not have Maria here?” 

“ Why, yes,” began Mrs. Abernethy, 
slowly. And then she went on briskly : 

The very thing ! How clever of you to 
think of it! You know I always said that 
your common-sense did at times amount to 
brilliancy. I have always wished to have 
her here, but I have never had a chance 
before. I received a letter only to-day from 
her mother — ” 

Before Mrs. Abernethy could proceed, the 
sharp, quick bark of a dog was heard in the 
next room ; the quick rustle of a dress be- 
came distinctly audible, the half-opened door 
was thrown wholly back, and a young girl, 
dressed evidently for a ball, and very much 
out of breath, entered, in pursuit of a fox- 
terrier puppy. 

“ Ruth,” exclaimed Mrs. Abernethy, look- 
ing up, “what is the matter?” 

“ He’s got my slipper,” said the girl, con- 
tinuing the chase around the table, “ and I 
can’t get it away from him.” 

Mrs. Abe^rnethy continued to gaze with 
unconcealed disapproval upon the animated 
pursuit, and when the terrier, finally driven 
into the recess formed by the window, had 


THE DRAGONESS 


221 


ft 


yielded up his prize with a short yelp, she 
spoke with some stiffness. 

Ruth,’' she said, “ I wish you could give 
us your attention for a moment.” 

“ Yes, auntie,” said the girl, thrusting back 
her bright, light hair, and glancing with 
brilliant eyes at the clock. “ But they’ll be 
here for me in five minutes. We go to the 
theatre before the dance — Mrs. ‘Tom’s’ 
party, you know.” 

Mrs. Abernethy visibly shuddered. 

“We have just come to a conclusion that 
may interest you,” she went on. 

“ If it isn’t nice, please don’t tell me,” ex- 
claimed her niece. ‘‘I’ve made up my mind 
to have a particularly good time to-night.” 

“As you know, we are obliged to go 
South next week on account of your un- 
cle’s health,” explained Mrs. Abernethy, 
“ and we think it best that you should re- 
main here. We hope that we are not un- 
wise in our decision.” 

“ I devoutly hope not,” said the niece, 
with a strange look in her eyes. 

“lam unwilling to do this, but really I see 
no other way,” continued Mrs. Abernethy. 

“ But — ” began Ruth. 


222 


“THE DRAGONESS’’ 


“ Of course we cannot* leave you alone in 
the, house.” 

“I suppose not,” said Ruth, mournfully. 

“And,” went on Mrs. Abernethy, “at the 
excellent suggestion of your uncle, I have 
decided to send for a near relation of his, a 
lady whom I have often desired to ask here, 
who will remain with you during our ab- 
sense.” 

“ Is she very old?” asked Ruth. 

“ I believe about thirty,” answered Mrs. 
Abernethy. 

“About thirty?” sighed her niece. “And 
will you please tell me her name ?” 

“ Miss Maria Kittridge.” 

“ Miss Maria Kittridge,” repeated Ruth, 
slowly. 

“ She is a most superior person,” said Mrs. 
Abernethy, “ and has always been held in 
the highest respect ; indeed, in her native 
place she is quite a power.” 

“And what is her native place like?” 
asked Ruth, desperately, 

“ It is called Hasbrook Centre, and is one 
of those New England villages which, 
though small in size, are rich in intelligence 
and cultivation.” 


“THE DRAGONESS” 223 

“And has she always lived there?” 

“ Always,” replied Mrs. Abernethy. “In- 
deed, though not absolutely obliged to do 
so, I believe Maria has always supported 
herself since she was twenty-one by teach- 
ing school. Very early in life she enter- 
tained the most serious views in regard to 
our responsibilities, and when she could 
have been hardly older than you now are, 
through her unaided exertions she had es- 
tablished a charity-organization society in 
Hasbrook, and had caused the erection of a 
coffee-house for the operatives in the great 
mills.” 

“ How does she look?” 

“ I have no clear memory of her personal 
appearance, as I have not seen her since 
she was a child ; but, if I remember rightly, 
she was somewhat small and insignificant. 
I have, however, always watched her career, 
as it has been unfolded to me in her moth- 
er’s letters, with the greatest interest and 
admiration. Let me read you something 
she has just written to me;” and Mrs. Ab- 
ernethy opened the paper she had in her 
hand. “‘With her regular hours for teach- 
ing and the time devoted every day to the 


224 


“THE DRAGONESS 


furtherance of her charitable schemes, you 
might suppose Maria is sufficiently em- 
ployed, but to one of her temperament any 
time unimproved is irksome. She has of 
late been interesting herself in the various 
socialistic questions of the hour, and has 
written a number of articles for the more 
serious periodicals that have called forth 
praise from the most distinguished author- 
ities. Of course, with such a character as 
hers, she will always find something to do, 
wherever she may be — some grievance to 
right, some error to correct, some reform to 
introduce; but still, were she in another 
place, she would be amid other surround- 
ings, and I am sure that some change would 
do her good.’ You see,” said Mrs. Aber- 
nethy, suddenly suspending her reading and 
glancing at her niece, who was thoughtfully 
crumpling the terrier’s soft flat ears, “ how 
exceptional a person Miss Kittridge really 
is.” 

“ Yes, auntie,” said Ruth. “ But cannot I 
have Betty Frew to stay with me?” 

“Oh, better have her,” interrupted Ab- 
ernethy, glancing at his niece by marriage. 
“ She might profit too by the society of this 


THE DRAGONESS 


225 


New England Minerva — this blue-stockinged 
Pallas.” 

“Very well,” said Mrs. Abernethy, reluc- 
tantly. 

At their very first interview, Ruth and 
Miss Frew took the situation into serious 
consideration. 

“Do you think she will be so very for- 
midable?” asked Ruth, after she had im- 
parted to her friend the facts gathered from 
Mrs. Abernethy. 

“I should think,” responded Miss Frew, 
“ that she could hardly be worse. I have 
no doubt that she will, very early, set about 
improving our minds, and immediately un- 
dertake to show us the frivolity of our lives. 
Now I, for one, am perfectly conscious pf 
my own triviality, but I like it. I feel very 
much about such high moral elevation as I 
do about Greek draperies — they may be very 
becoming in another, but they are not for 
me. I am not Antigone ; I am article de 
Parish 

“ But what shall we do ?” 

“Treat her kindly but firmly; from the 
very outset let her see that she cannot im- 

15 


226 '‘THE DRAGONESS” 

pose upon us. Everything will depend upon 
the way we first meet her. I should advise 
extreme reserve." 

“Oh," exclaimed Ruth, “it is frightful to 
have such a — such a — " She paused. 

“ Dragoness," suggested Miss Frew. 

“Yes, that’s it — ‘ dragoness,’ " went on 
Ruth, eagerly, “ always about. I was really 
cruel to get you to come here." 

“A friend in need," said Miss Frew. “I 
will stand by you to the last sentence in the 
last discussion in the last number of the 
North American, and I will not even desert 
you when I see that Browning is imminent 
and inevitable." 


II 

The through express had just arrived, and 
long before the dusty, tired-looking cars had 
come to rest, the passengers began to jostle 
each other on the platform and jump from 
the moving train. Almost like an ungov- 
ernable mob, the liberated travellers surged 
through the station, while the cries of the 
porters, the rattle of passing trucks, the jar 
of heavy baggage, and the deafening and 


THE DRAGONESS 


227 




pervading roar of the escaping steam added 
to the din and turbulence. 

“ But how," said Ruth, anxiously, “ shall 
we ever know her?" 

“ Eye-glasses," answered Miss Frew, “ and 
a dress that would be an excellent fit for — 
somebody else." 

The throng in the waiting-room thinned, 
but still no one resembling the ideal that 
the watchers had formed of the “dragoness" 
appeared. 

“ I don’t believe she has come, after all," 
said Ruth. 

Almost as she spoke she heard herself ad- 
dressed in a low, sweet, shy voice. “I think 
perhaps you may be looking for me." 

Ruth turned quickly, and saw a little 
feminine figure, clad in worn but well-fitting 
gray. She stared with a surprised and curi- 
ous intensity, while the person upon whom 
her eyes were fixed stood before her some- 
what embarrassedly, and evidently not quite 
sure what to do next. In her right arm she 
carried a large bundle, which with difficulty 
she changed to her left, and then almost 
timidly held out her hand. 

“My name," she said, gently, “is Maria 
Kittridge." 


228 


“THE DRAGONESS” 


“The ‘dragoness,’ '' murmured Miss Frew 
to herself ; but Ruth, for some reason, seemed 
unable to speak. 

“ I hope,” went on the “ dragoness ” — for 
she it certainly was — with greater assurance, 
“ that you have not had to wait long for me. 
I think that we are a little late.” 

“No — no, indeed,” exclaimed Ruth, rather 
brokenly, realizing that she must say some- 
thing. “But let Jackson take your bundle 
and your checks.” 

The “ dragoness ” yielded up her parcel 
with evident solicitude ; then obediently de- 
livered a single brass token to the waiting 
servant, and meekly followed her future 
charges through the bewildered emigrants, 
and along the sidewalk, past the ravening 
hackmen, to the carriage. 

The lengthening winter day was drawing 
to an end, but thd sun had not yet set, and 
still shone redly along the westward-running 
streets, brilliantly lighting up the great glass 
windows of the big shops, falling with warm- 
ing glow upon the crowds of work-people 
hastening along the walks, and glittering on 
the rattling harness of the impatient coach- 
horses. The slight dust that rose from the 


“THE DRAGONESS" 


229 


frozen but snowless streets was glitteringly 
golden, and a thin haze, warmly violet, dulled 
the sharp lines of the distances. The “drag- 
oness ” looked through the windows of the 
carriage, and almost with delight seemed to 
feast her eyes upon the city sights, to drink 
in the harsh city sounds. 

“ I have never been away very much from 
home,” she exclaimed. “ Only in Boston a 
few times a year on business, and once in 
New York long ago.” 

She looked very small, leaning back 
among the cushions, but not at all insignifi- 
cant. Indeed, there was an air of determi- 
nation, of self-reliance, about her that made 
it impossible on most occasions to overlook 
her. Her eyes, which were certainly unnat- 
urally large — or perhaps they were made to 
appear so by her thick, curling eyelashes — 
were not turned from the panorama of the 
streets ; and her lips, which were very warmly 
red, remained slightly parted, as if in excite- 
ment, showing her white, small, regular teeth. 
However, if her eyes were large, they were 
not like most large eyes, dreamy, and per- 
haps a trifle dull ; on the contrary, they were 
very bright and wide-awake. And if her 


230 


“THE DRAGONESS 


mouth was wide, it certainly was only made 
thereby the more expressive. 

“ I hope you will not mind me,” she said, 
suddenly, “ but I am confident that I am 
staring.” 

Ruth had begun to explain to the “drag- 
oness” that Mrs. Abernethy had been 
obliged to start “ immediately,” when the 
hollow rumble of the victoria, that could be 
so distinctly heard on the smooth asphalt, 
was lost as the wheels ground on the gravel 
of the driveway and the carriage swept up 
to the house. It was one of the latest and 
best specimens of our modern American ar- 
chitecture, in which fantastic form is so often 
allied with dignified simplicity, in which 
studied rudeness is carefully blended with 
nice elaboration, in which extreme comfort- 
ableness is not inconsistent with rich mag- 
nificence. Standing on the broad flagging 
under the porte-cochere^ the “dragoness” 
glanced along the western front, where the 
broad windows flashed with orange glow in 
the light of the low sun, with the expression 
of one who is a little overawed. Silently 
she passed through the doors, which swung 
open so noiselessly and mysteriously on 


“THE DRAGONESS” 


231 


their bronze hinges, and entered the dim 
hall, where the warm air was heavy with the 
perfume of invisible flowers. She glanced, 
with what really seemed almost reverence, 
at the heavy polished panelling, and the dull 
harmonious portieres that only half hid the 
luxurious vistas beyond. She only seemed 
to arouse herself, to awake from what ap- 
peared a pleasant revery, as the big clock 
with the “ cathedral chimes ” struck half- 
past five; for, as the sweet jingle languished 
away, she slightly trembled, and looked up 
at Ruth with a half-apologetic, half-grateful 
smile. 

“ I cannot understand her,” said Miss 
Frew, excitedly. “She’s an enigma — a per- 
fect sphinx.” 

“ Except,” suggested Ruth, “ that enigmas 
are stupid and that sphinxes are not at all 
pretty. And she is pretty — awfully pretty.” 

“There’s no doubt about it,” assented 
Miss Frew. 

As they passed along the hall they saw a 
small piece of luggage with yellow sides and 
strange black rulings carried up the stairs. 

“How fearfully in character!” said Miss 


232 


THE DRAGONESS'’ 


Frew. And then she thought of her own 
huge trunks, covered with the labels of the 
steamers, the railroads, the hotels of half of 
Christendom. 

“ But,” said Ruth, suddenly, as if a clearer 
realization of the terrors of the situation had 
been vouchsafed to her — “ but what shall we 
do this evening ?” 

“ Discuss the latest theory as to the site 
of Troy, touch lightly upon the probable 
nature of the solar ‘ coronae,’ casually con- 
sider the advisability of taxing church prop- 
erty, incidentally mention the realistic ten- 
dencies of modern literature, and then plunge 
with absorbing interest into an inquiry into 
socialism — past, present, and to come,” an- 
swered Miss Frew. 

Ruth sighed deeply. 

“ Now I don’t believe you have the least 
idea of what ‘ nationalism ’ is,” continued 
Miss Frew, “or could find a word to say 
upon the tariff as a home topic ; while in 
European politics you do not even possess 
such essential and elemental knowledge as 
what were the date and nature of the treaty 
of Kuchuck-Kainardji — the key of the East- 
ern question.” 


“THE DRAGONESS” 


233 


“ No,” answered Ruth, “ I don’t; but I 
know the date of the battle of Hastings.” 

“That, my child,” observed Miss Frew, 
“ is a drug in ihe market. There never was 
a girl who didn’t know that ; besides, the 
* dragoness ’ would call it ‘ Senlac.’ ” 

The room to which Miss Kittridge had 
been taken was charming with the frilled 
and ruffled crispiness of its fittings-up, where 
all values of blue were to be found, from the 
dark hue of the polished tiles to the faint 
azure of the shadowed dressing-table. The 
“ dragoness ” hesitated a moment on her 
entrance, and, only when she found herself 
alone, sank somewhat stiffly into one of the 
long, broad, abysmal chairs. The smoulder- 
ing fire fell in with a gentle sound, and the 
freshly mounting flames crackling cheerful- 
ly, sent flickering lights frolicking over the 
place, to be scattered and to glitter in a 
hundred reflections and deflections as they 
fell upon shining porcelain and gleaming 
metal. Perhaps the “dragoness” was weary 
from her ride. At all events, for some 
reason, she sighed deeply, and, with what 
seemed almost relaxation of her whole be- 


234 


“THE DRAGONESS 




ing, settled herself more comfortably in the 
yielding cushions of the long, low lounge. 
It is unquestionable that she was lost in 
meditation upon some very serious subject, 
for she sat quite still for a long time, gaz- 
ing curiously at the leaping flames. 

“We had better send for her,” said Ruth, 
when dinner was announced and the 
“ dragoness ” had not yet appeared. 

Still Miss Kittridge did not come ; and it 
was only after Ruth had said, “ I’m sure 
she won’t want to have us wait for her,” 
and Miss Frew and herself were passing 
through the hall, that she appeared, de- 
scending the main stairs with great rapidity, 
but with an evident effort not to have her 
heels click too loudly upon the hard, pol- 
ished wood. 

“You see I am always late,” she said, 
checking herself in her onrush, and bringing 
up before them. 

She was dressed very much as she had 
been on her arrival. The gown was no 
longer gray; it was black. It was no longer 
cloth ; it was silk ; but it bore unmistak- 
able evidence that its origin was the same 


“THE DRAGONESS” 


235 


as its predecessor’s. No two creations of 
Corot or of Redfern were ever more un- 
questionably from the same hand, and Ruth 
and Miss Frew did not for an instant hesi- 
tate to believe that the fingers that had 
shaped both were the white, soft, firm 
fingers of the “ dragoness ” herself. There 
was the same evident effort of good taste 
to assert itself in spite of insufficient 
knowledge, inadequate skill, and unworthy 
material, that had been manifested in the 
other production. That the “ dragoness ” 
looked as pretty as she did was certainly 
not owing to the splendor or even perfect 
suitability of her attire; indeed, that her 
dress was at all endurable was wholly owing 
to the fact that it was the “ dragoness ” 
who happened to wear it. If, however, her 
raiment was simple and severe, there was a 
great elaboration about her hair ; and had 
not the sages of antiquity decided — a de- 
cision corroborated by the wisdom of the 
ages — that it is utterly impossible to explain 
the action of a pretty woman, it would be 
unhesitatingly asserted that the care she had 
taken in the arrangement of her locks had 
made the “ dragoness ” late for dinner. 


236 


“THE DRAGONESS” 


Ruth took the head of the table — “ for 
that time only,” she explained — and then, 
constituting herself a forlorn hope, bravely 
attacked the position. 

“ I hope you found everything you want- 
ed?” she said. 

“ Oh, everything!” answered the “ drag- 
oness,” effusively. 

“ I am afraid,” continued Ruth, “that you 
will find but little here that will interest 
you. However, you will have a great deal 
of time for your writing and studying and — 
and all that sort of thing.” 

“ I suppose I might,” answered, the “ drag- 
oness,” doubtfully ; “ but I don’t think I 
shall do very much in that way.” 

Ruth, greatly puzzled, was debating in her 
own mind whether it would be fitting to 
ask the reason of such unaccountable absti- 
nence, when Miss Frew, who had been eying 
the “ dragoness ” with that critical interest 
with which we are given to understand the 
earlier occupants of the roof are wont to 
receive the latest feline intruder, suddenly 
broke out, in the manner of one whose 
curiosity cannot longer remain unsatisfied: 

“ Can you really read Greek ?” 


THE DRAGONESS” 


237 


“ Oh, yes !” said the “ dragoness,” looking 
up and smiling a little ; “ it is really not so 
hard. I began when I was quite young, 
with a professor in Harvard College who 
spends the summer in Hasbrook.” 

“ Shades of Heloise and Abelard !” mur- 
mured Miss Frew. 

They questioned her about the manage- 
ment of her school, her libraries, her charities. 
They tried her on more general subjects. 
Music — she played a little, and acknowl- 
edged that she sang in the choir; but though 
she knew that musical Italy had found an 
Attila, she would not have recognized a 
Wagnerian motif " if she had met one. 
Art — she knew the histories of the old 
masters, and had read Ruskin “ for the style.” 
Literature — They were about to fall upon 
literature as a topic upon which she could 
certainly be induced to say something, when 
suddenly she looked up pleadingly, and spoke 
with more decision than had hitherto been 
apparent in her tone. 

“ It is very good of you,” she said, “to 
ask me so many questions about myself, and 
about things that I know do not interest 
you, for what can you care whether we in- 


238 ''T-HE DRAGONESS” 

troduce manual training into our public 
schools, admit the works of the positive 
thinkers to the shelves of the library, or 
advocate co-operation among the poor? I 
wish you would talk to me about yourselves, 
you do so many things.” 

“ Why,” said Ruth, in surprise, “ I never 
thought of myself in that way. I only do 
what every one else has done.” 

“ Except myself,” said the dragoness,” 
with a grim little smile, and almost as humili- 
ated an aspect as she might be supposed to 
wear if some one had asked her what the 
digamma was and she had not known. 

“ I wonder,” observed Ruth, in her em- 
barrassment, “ if there will be any one here 
to-night? I hope that Uncle Sigwill come.” 

“Who is that ?” asked the “ dragoness.” 

“ The dearest old imbecile that ever walked 
— or rather rode, for that’s about all Uncle 
Sig ever does. But you wouldn’t care for 
him, he isn’t learned in the least, unless as 
to the pedigree of a debutante or a race- 
horse ; isn’t clever at anything except lead- 
ing a cotillon, playing a hand at whist, or driv- 
ing tandem.” 

“ Really,” said the “ dragoness,” and Miss 


THE DRAGONESS 


239 


<< 


Frew, closely as she watched her, could not 
detect whether the rising inflection indicated 
scorn or not. “ I don’t think I ever saw any 
one just like that.” 

“ He’s always in love with everybody, in- 
cluding himself, and will do all the nice 
things for you that only a thoroughly selfish 
man would know how to do.” 

“ But he’s at the Dallison dinner,” said 
Miss Frew. 

“ No ; for that’s put off because — because ” 
— she hesitated, for she did not like to say 
that it had been postponed because of the 
arrival of the “ dragoness ” and her own in- 
ability to be there — “ Mrs. ‘ Tom ’ thought 
it would be better later in the week.” 

The “ dragoness ” glanced at Ruth inquir- 
ingly. 

“Oh, Mrs. ‘Tom,’” she said, in reply to 
the mute question, “ is the friend of the 
unrighteous ; the leader of the army of the 
‘ New Order of Things ’ ; the brightest, pret- 
tiest, most extravagant married woman in 
all Andros ; my greatest friend, and auntie’s 
pet bHe noire r 

“You forget Harold Redmond,” suggested 
Miss Frew, maliciously. 


240 


“ THE DRAGONESS 


>> 


“In that case translate bHe noire, black 
sheep/’ answered Ruth, calmly. 

“ I am sure,” said the “ dragoness,” with 
what, if she had been one who would have 
been likely to have felt any sympathy with 
such personages, could have been thought a 
tone of respectful consideration, “ I should 
like to see them.” 

Dinner ended, and as Ruth rose from the 
table and passed into the library she was 
brought face to face with the fact that there 
was an evening before her. Eight, nine, 
ten, eleven — one could not reasonably expect 
to seek a well-earned rest before that time. 
Three hours ! As she took up some sewing 
— some “ plain sewing,” which she had pre- 
pared “ for a first effect” — she glanced de- 
spondently at Miss Frew, who had seated 
herself at the piano, and had already begun 
to play the “Fire Music” as if she could 
sympathize with the encircled and im- 
prisoned Brunhilde. 

“And how,” said Sigourney Fales, as he 
entered the room, “do I find my burdens? 
Your uncle’s last words were that I should 
look after you, and I come to fulfil my trust.” 


THE DRAGONESS 


241 


<< 


»» 


If,” answered Ruth, “ we are as burden- 
some to you as we are to ourselves, I pity 
you.” Then, turning to the “ dragoness,” 
she added, “ Miss Kittridge, I want to pre- 
sent to you our very dear friend Mr. Tales.” 

Ruth and Miss Frew gazed at the “drag- 
oness” with unconcealed amazement. She 
had looked small, dowdy, insignificant, as 
she sat in the chair near the fire and gazed 
helplessly about the strange room ; but now 
her hand sought a large scarlet fan that lay 
on a table near her, and, with this carefully 
interposed between her face and the blaze, 
she glanced slowly up at Sigourney Tales. 
A brighter light had come into her eyes, a 
warmer flush was upon her cheeks ; about 
her mouth played an enigmatical smile, half 
challenging, half appealing. Her body ap- 
peared to stiffen and yet to relax ; to 
.straighten and yet to droop, her every mo- 
tion was more swift and yet more assured. 
The “dragoness” seemed to cry “Ha! ha!” 
and to scent the fray from afar. 

“We have just been talking of you,” she 
said. 

There was something in her voice, some 
new, vibrant ring that caused her charges to 
16 


242 


“ THE DRAGONESS 


glance at each other with renewed astonish- 
ment. It was hardly noticeable, but there 
was certainly an animation, an alertness, that 
had not been discoverable in her tones before. 

“ Oh," said Fales, “ this is ungenerous. We 
are only expected to leave our character be- 
hind us, as you know. We should not be 
subjected to a sort of anticipatory vivisec- 
tion. I hope you were merciful." 

“ I didn’t say anything," answered the 
“ dragoness " ; “ and really I am very much 
surprised, for it was something I didn’t know 
anything about." 

“ I am relieved," said Fales. “ Of course 
when you know something, then you will say 
nothing. I am safe." 

She laughed lightly. 

“ So," he said, looking complacently around, 
“ the ‘ dragoness ’ didn’t come, after all." 

Ruth glanced helplessly at Miss Frew, 
who in bewilderment was watching the un- 
conscious Fales, and the extremely conscious 
“ dragoness." 

Miss Kittridge blushed deeply — “She 
must have gone to bed at ten o’clock every 
night of her life to have that complexion at 
her age," Miss Frew had said — Miss Kittridge 


THE DRAGONESS 


243 


<( 


blushed deeply, as indeed she had a way 
of doing upon all extraordinary and some 
ordinary occasions, and spoke up brave- 
ly, before Ruth succeeded in finding that 
most elusive object of search — something 
to say. 

“ Oh,” she observed, pleasantly, “ I sup- 
pose I am the ‘dragoness’; but, please, 
why did I not answer to your idea of the 
character?” 

Ruth cast on her a glance of unquestion- 
able thankfulness. 

“Why, you — you’re too young,” stammer- 
ed Fales, utterly disconcerted. 

“ What a subtle compliment !” laughed 
Miss Kittridge. 

What Fales answered and what the “ drag- 
oness ” said that evening, are of no particu- 
lar consequence, or would only aid in a 
slight degree in forming any conception of 
the remarkable character thus unexpectedly 
introduced to Andros, or would tend only 
slightly to promote an understanding of the 
singular events that took place during Mrs. 
Abernethy’s absence — events over which 
she is to this day puzzled. Sufficient it is 
to say that Sigourney Fales and the “ drag- 


244 


“THE DRAGONESS 


ff 


oness” seemed to find inexhaustible subjects 
for conversation; that soon Miss Frew re- 
turned unnoticed to the piano, and Ruth 
slipped unperceived into the adjoining room 
to finish a book she had begun before 
Christmas. At first neither of these gave 
great heed to the flight of time, but as the 
more rapid minute-hand had overtaken and 
passed once and again his staid and seri- 
ous fellow-wayfarer, they gradually became 
aware that they were getting sleepy. First 
the onyx-and-gilt clock in the drawing-room 
struck the hour trippingly; then the quarter 
was sounded by the old timepiece on the 
landing, that had come down from another 
generation, when they took account of such 
trifles ; then the half rang out faintly from 
some remote region above ; and then again 
came the hour. 

“He is telling her his very oldest story,” 
whispered Ruth to Miss Frew, as she joined 
her in the music-room ; “ and she is actually 
laughing as though she enjoyed it.” 

Another sixty minutes passed, and the 
situation was becoming serious. 

“She is begging him to tell her,” repeated 
Miss Frew, “how he got out of Paris during 


THE DRAGONESS 


245 




the siege, and if he once begins upon that 
we are lost.” 

Another hour dragged on, and finally 
Fales, with visible reluctance,, managed to 
rise. 

“Did he ask her to drive with him?” 
whispered Ruth as they wearily made their 
way up-stairs. 

“I think so,” replied Miss Frew, drowsily. 

“ What did she say ?” 

“ I think she said that she would.” 

Ill 

When Miss Frew and Ruth came down 
the next morning they found the “drag- 
oness ” already in the breakfast-room. It 
transpired long afterwards that she had arisen 
when the day was still so new as not to be 
recognizable by good society, and had pa- 
tiently awaited their- appearance. 

“ Well,” she said, brightly, “ what are you 
going to do this morning?” 

Before Ruth could answer, a servant an- 
nounced that Mrs. Dallison wished to speak 
to her. 

“ I’ll bring her in,” exclaimed Ruth. 


246 


THE DRAGONESS ” 


‘‘ Do,” said the “ dragoness.” “ I want to 
see her so very much.” 

“Are you still alive?” asked Mrs. Dallison 
as Ruth met her in the hall. “And are you 
already prepared to adopt dress reform ? 
Do you feel an overpowering desire to vote?” 

“ Come,” answered Ruth, mysteriously. 

Mrs. Dallison, with her light, rapid tread, 
crossed the threshold of the breakfast-room, 
and stopped short. Certainly the “ drag- 
oness ” was no gorgon, but she seemed to 
have an astonishingly petrifying effect upon 
those who beheld her. 

“Oh!” exclaimed Mrs. “Tom,” involun- 
tarily. 

“ Mrs. Dallison wishes to see you,” said 
Ruth, rushing to the rescue, and looking at 
the “ dragoness,” who stood up nervously 
clasping and unclasping her hands. 

“ Yes, Miss Kittridge,” said Mrs. Dallison, 
recovering from her too evident astonish- 
ment. “ I am going to have a little dinner 
and dance at the Country Club to-night, and 
I want you all to come.” 

Now, if ever, was the chance for the “drag- 
oness” to prove herself the true duenna; now 
was the time for her to exhibit that firmness 


THE DRAGONESS 


247 


of character and promptness of resolution that 
would in future assure to her unquestioned 
obedience and respect. But she did not 
seem particularly determined, or at all cer- 
tain what she would do. Indeed, she looked 
helplessly at Ruth, and only asked, mildly, 

“ Do you think that we could ?” 

“Of course,” assured Ruth, joyfully; while 
in instantaneous process she thought : “ Of 
all things, the Country Club, Mrs. ‘ Tom,’ 
and probably Harold. What would auntie 
say?” and her heart glowed with sudden 
warmth for the “dragoness.” 

“We will have the greatest pleasure in 
accepting your kind invitation,” said that 
personage, a little primly. 

“ If,” said Mrs. “ Tom,” as she stood upon 
the door-step, whither Ruth had accompanied 
her, “the rural. districts contain any more 
like that, I hope that they will stay there. 
I am generally quite a self - satisfied per- 
son, but a complexion such as that is alone 
enough to make one perfectly emerald with 
envy!” and, entering her coup6, she viciously 
slammed the door. 

When Ruth returned and took her place at 
the table, she found Miss Kittridge in evi- 


248 


“THE DRAGONESS" 


dent distress, and clearly possessed with some- 
thing she found extremely difficult to say. 

“ I,” she began, then paused — “ I want to 
ask you something. About — you know — 
what ought I to wear to-night?’’ 

“ Oh,” exclaimed Ruth, “almost anything 
will do.” 

“ But,” said the “ dragoness,” hopelessly, 
“ I don’t seem to have even anything. You 
see I never have cared very much about — 
my clothes.” Then she added, in a sudden 
burst of confidence, “ I wish now that I had.” 

“I think,” interrupted Miss Frew, “that 
you might, if you wouldn’t mind, take some- 
thing of mine.” 

“ Oh! would you let me?” cried the “drag- 
oness,” with an expression of the deepest 
gratitude in her tone. “ Do you think they 
would fit?” 

“ We can try,” answered Miss Frew. 

Miss Kittridge advanced before the great 
mirror, while Ruth and Miss Frew fell back 
to get a better view of the result of their 
labors. 

“ It is simply perfect,” said Rut,h, impres- 
sively, in irrepressible admiration. 


THE DRAGONESS 


249 


The dragoness ” looked up with a short, 
excited laugh ; retreated a step, and then 
gazed silently at the reflection in the glass. 
For a long time, motionless, wordless, she 
stood contemplating the small, slight, modish 
figure the mirror revealed to her, studying it as 
one might some interesting stranger; then she 
sighed deeply, and, turning, made a swift, pos- 
itive gesture with her right hand, such as one 
makes when he puts something from him. 

“I feel so strange,” said the “dragoness;” 
“ there doesn’t seem to be so much of me. 
I suppose that is because it fits.” 

“ Yes,” assented Miss Frew. 

“But then,” continued the “dragoness,” 
turning her head, and vainly trying to look 
straight down her back, “ it seems as if I were 
acting a part. I must have a rehearsal, or I 
shall disgrace myself.” 

“ C<ymQ down-stairs and walk about,” sug- 
gested Ruth. 

“Now,” said- the “dragoness,” as she stood 
before the drawing-room door, “ I will now 
imagine that I am about to encounter for 
the first time an assemblage of my fellow- 
beings whom I wish to impress.” 

Drawing herself up to her full height, and 


250 


'‘THE DRAGONESS” 


bearing herself with a dignity not unworthy 
of the stateliest presence, the “ dragoness " 
advanced through the doorway, swept into the 
darkened apartment beyond, and suddenly 
finding herself face to face with a startled 
young man,who had just risen from a chair, re- 
treated ignominiously and in utter confusion. 

“ Oh, Harold !” exclaimed Ruth, hasten- 
ing forward, “ I had no idea you were here.’' 

“ I just sent word,” he answered, without 
once looking from the “ dragoness,” who, 
blushing furiously, and evidently on the 
point of flight, stood just within the room. 

“ I’m so glad you’ve come,” continued Ruth. 
“ I want to present you to Miss Kittridge.” 

“ I am afraid,” said Redmond, at length 
recovering from the hardly restrained laugh- 
ter that had almost prevented speech, “ that 
I have disturbed you.” 

“You have,” said the “ dragoness,” sharp- 
ly; “very seriously. I never felt more dis- 
turbed in all my life.” 

The strong morning light streamed in 
through the window, and, falling on the yellow 
and gold of the decorations, spread in a sallow 
flood over all the place. It was a severe test, but 
the “ dragoness ” stood it — stood it gloriously. 


“THE DRAGONESS” 


251 


“Now/' said Ruth, “ I know that Miss 
Kittridge is going to ask you to stay to 
luncheon.” 

“Are you ?” begged Redmond, pleadingly. 

“ Yes,” answered the “ dragoness.” 

The pretty ballroom of the Country Club 
was well filled, but the crowd was not so 
great as to spoil the dancing. There was 
not that crush and swirl of humanity that is 
found so often in even larger rooms — com- 
pacted masses in which individual motion 
is almost impossible, and the dancers flow 
along in a human current. But the floor, so 
smooth as to reflect the lights in blurred, 
bright blotches, as a dancing- floor should, 
was well covered, and along the walls, hung 
with hunting “ prints,” in which the “ pink ” 
coats afforded brilliant color, were thick 
rows of chaperons. It was a charming 
room at any time, simple and tasteful in its 
adornment, but now it seemed particularly 
attractive, as the “ buds ” of the winter, in 
a state of semi-beatitude, and the veterans, 
married and unmarried, of other seasons, 
with a more critical and contained enjoy- 
ment, sped onward in the dance. 


252 


'‘THE DRAGONESS 


>» 


Ruth, pausing as the last bars of the last 
waltz lingered on the air and then gently 
sank away, looked about anxiously. 

“What can have become of her?” she 
thought. “ I haven’t seen her for half an 
hour.” 

Those who had hurried over the floor in 
the wild rout of the dance, now, like rallied 
soldiers, had fallen into more regular order, 
and Ruth walked onward in their ranks. 

“ Where can she be ?” she asked, with her 
lips only, as she passed Miss Frew. 

Miss Frew shook her head. 

“ It is very strange,” thought Ruth. “Can 
it be that she isn’t having a good time ?” 

The slow onward march had brought her 
opposite Mrs. “ Tom,” who stood by the door, 
as radiant as a debutante^ and as sagacious as 
a dowager. 

“Have you seen the ‘dragoness’ any- 
where ?” asked Ruth, eagerly. 

“ The ‘ dragoness’?” answered Mrs. “ Tom.” 
The name had in some way escaped from 
custody, and for ever and aye as the “ drag- 
oness” Miss Kittridge was to be known. 
“ Why, yes, I think I saw her a few moments 
^go.” 


THE DRAGONESS 


253 


it 


I hope she is enjoying herself,” said 
Ruth, anxiously. 

“ I rather thought she was,” replied Mrs. 
“Tom,” with a slight air of maliciousness. 
“ I think you’ll find her somewhere down- 
stairs.” 

Ruth descended the steps that led to the 
floor below, followed by Sigourney Fales, 
with whom she had been dancing. From 
the lower landing she was able to obtain an 
immediate and comprehensive view of the 
large but cozy apartment, with its broad 
fireplace and great, low divans, that formed 
the main room of the club-house. 

In one corner, with all the cushions in 
reach gathered for the more comfortable 
support of her small person, sat the “drag- 
oness,” leaning back languidly, her small, 
slippered feet peeping out from under 

“ Symphonies in needle-work 
Where dimpled pearly shadows lurk,” 

while Harold Redmond leaned eagerly over 
her. 

“Oh!” said Miss Kittridge, in a surprised, 
slightly injured tone; “were you looking for 
me?” 


254 


“THE DRAGONESS” 


IV 

And now what follows is wild, incom- 
prehensible, inconceivable. No one ever 
exactly understood it all; no one certainly 
ever attempted to give any account of it. 
It seemed as if something had happened to 
spur the not-lagging life of Andros to still 
greater speed — as if some new influence 
more potent even than Mrs. “Tom" herself 
had arisen and was powerfully at work. An- 
dros had been “gay’’ before; it was giddy 
now. 

Many marvelled at the change; Mrs. 
“Tom," as incapable of jealousy as of any 
other meanness, was radiant. 

“ I cannot conceive," she admitted “ what 
has come over the spirit of our dreams — or 
rather the spirit of our ways — for we were 
never before in such a state of wide-awake- 
ness." 

Sigourney Pales, who had heard the re- 
mark, happened that night to take Miss 
Kittridge in to dinner. 

“ I know," he said, referring to Mrs. 
“Tom’s" speeth, “what has made the 
change." 


“THE DRAGONESS” 


255 


“ What ?” asked the “ dragoness,” inno- 
cently. 

“ You,” he answered. 

She looked directly at him, as she had a 
way of doing with those to whom she was 
talking. 

“ What perfect nonsense !” she said. “ The 
idea that it would, be possible for one person 
to affect a whole society, and that person 
myself !” 

She paused. 

“If you can change the world for one,” 
he murmured, “ why not for all .^” 

The “dragoness” laughed merrily. 

It must have been the “dragoness.” She 
had become the rage; all men extolled her 
fairness, her manner, her gowns, and most 
women envied her such praise ; but, master- 
ed by her careless, fearless, unconscious car- 
riage, they forgot any bitterness they might 
feel, and liked and admired her too. 

The “ dragoness ” drove and dined and 
danced. No duckling — ugly or otherwise, 
and the “dragoness” was distinctly “other- 
wise ” — ever took to the swim more kindly 
than did this strange, unaccountable being. 
From luncheon she went to “ teas,” from 


556 ‘‘THE DRAGONESS’' 

“ teas ” to dinners, and from dinners to 
dances. Indeed, there was little to which 
she did not go — nothing at which she did 
not stay, once having gone. 

“ I hardly know you,'' said Harold Red- 
mond, as he led with her the Harpendings' 
cotillon. 

“That is not strange," she answered; “I 
hardly know myself." 

She traced with her foot a mysterious 
figure on the white, duck-covered floor, and 
looked up. 

“Come," she said, impatiently, “one more 
turn before the music stops." 

It was very strange ; she seemed to breathe 
with stronger, freer lung ; to revel as if in 
the expanse of a more ample life. 

“I must have been frivolous all my life," 
she confided to Ruth, “ and never have 
known it. Is not that tragic?" Then she 
laughed, and added, “ I feel as if you were 
bringing me out." 

And it did seem as if the “ dragoness " 
were some open-eyed debutante ^ just realiz- 
ing the possibilities of a life dreamed in dull 
school-rooms over dreary exercises — a longed- 
for life where all the world would be as it 


THE DRAGONESS” 


257 


was between the pages of hidden novels — 
distracting and delicious. 

The Abernethy library is no pretence. 
The large book-cases rise on three sides 
from the floor to the ceiling, filled on the 
lower shelves with many “ tall copies,” and, 
on the upper, with lighter volumes that seem 
to have risen naturally to the top. It is a 
large and handsome room, with heavy wood- 
work and a massive fireplace. Here and 
there are serious-looking bronzes, and in one 
corner a marble shows in ghostly whiteness. 

On this dull February day it seemed par- 
ticularly dark, the gray light of the waning 
afternoon merely illumining a narrow space 
about the windows, and leaving the shadowed 
depths of the room in an obscurity broken 
only by the occasional and fitful gleams of 
the fire. If Mrs. Abernethy, or Ruth, or 
even Miss Frew, could have looked within 
its book-lined walls at that particular time 
of the winter day, she would have beheld a 
scene that would have surprised and per- 
plexed her. 

The “ dragoness,” with her hands behind 
her and her back towards the embrasure of 

17 


258 


“THE DRAGONESS” 


the deep window, stood like one at bay : while 
before her, in evident agitation, with pale 
cheeks and flashing eyes, was Harold Red- 
mond, utterly unconscious of the absurdity 
of his own appearance. Whether the “drag- 
oness” was aware of it or not was uncertain, 
for though at times she seemed inclined to 
laugh hysterically, there were moments when 
it was evident she was quite as near bursting 
into tears. 

“No, no, no!” said the “ dragoness,” with 
steadily increasing emphasis. 

“But why not?” urged Redmond, vig- 
orously. 

“ Because — because you are crying for the 
moon,” she said, “ and that, you know, is 
very silly.” 

“ But if I want it, I want it,” said Harold, 
stoutly. 

“How absurd you are!” said the “drag- 
oness.” “Science will tell you that the 
moon is only an old, cold, dead star.” 

“ It is my star,” he said, sullenly. 

“You should wish for some fair young 
planet,” observed the “ dragoness,” glancing 
out of the window into the bare, brown gar- 
den, where the great spongy snow-flakes 


“THE DRAGONESS” 


259 


melted as soon as they fell, “that is just 
swinging out into space and life.” 

“ I love you, I do ; and I cannot say or 
think anything else,” said Harold, evidently 
reverting to some former stage of the inter- 
view. 

“Oh!” exclaimed the “ dragoness,” with 
a little start, “ it is very wrong of you to 
say this.” 

“Why?” 

“ There are a great many whys,” she an- 
swered, seriously ; “ so very many.” She 
paused for a moment, and then went on, 
more slowly and sadly : “ I know that you 
believe that you feel what you say, but how 
long do you believe you would feel as you 
do now ?” 

“ Always.” 

“ I think not,” went on the “ dragoness,” 
and then for a moment she did not speak. 
“I have not treated what you have said 
with the seriousness that it has deserved — 
with the respect that I h^ve really felt for 
it. I thought that perhaps we could get 
along the best in that way. Harold” — she 
put out her hand, but as Redmond made a 
movement as if to take it, she swiftly placed it 


26 o 


“THE DRAGONESS 




again behind her — “do not think that I do 
not prize what you have said. I prize it too 
highly, perhaps.” She again paused. “ No, 
no! You must not make me say anything, 
for anything that I would want to say I 
would be sure to regret.” 

“ But can’t you — won’t you — ” 

“ What I may feel or think,” interrupted 
the “dragoness,” “you must not ask me, and 
I must not ask myself. I must not, cannot, 
feel anything. I am an old woman.” 

“You are only six months older than I 
am,” urged Redmond. 

“ At my age that is a very great deal,” 
said the “ dragoness,’’ firmly. 

“ But I love you,” said Redmond again, 
who, with a lover’s instinct, knew that in 
that sentence all is said, that in those sim- 
ple words lies his strongest argument. 

“ Yes, you do now,” responded the “ drag- 
oness,” still more seriously. “ But you have 
loved others, and you will again. Before I 
came here — I must tell you all the ‘whys’ — 
you know you cared for Ruth ; you had all 
but told her so.” 

“ But I had not seen you.” 

“ I am only the fancy of the moment. 


“THE DRAGONESS” 261 

You love her, and she loves you. You are 
hers by right of youth, of beauty, of love, 
and you shall not — I shall not let you — 
make a mistake. If she suspected what you 
have told me, she would be very miserable. 
You must love her, and you must marry 
her.” 

“ But—” 

“You do not think now that you will do 
it, but you will ; and the time will come when 
you will bless me for what I have done — 
when you will laugh at yourself for thinking 
that you ever could have been in love with 
an old woman like me. Yes, Harold, that 
time will come, and you will thank me for 
saving you from yourself. No one shall ever 
know what you have said to me ; not Ruth, 
for she might imagine that this meant more 
to you than it really does. You will forget 
all about it, and I — ” 

“And you ?” said Redmond, as the “drag- 
oness ” paused. 

“ Kneel down,” she said ; and as Redmond 
sank on one knee at her feet she brushed 
back an errant lock of his hair, and, bending 
over, kissed him on the forehead. “And I will 
forget too,” she murmured. 


262 


‘‘THE DRAGONESS 


9f 


V 

Mrs. Abernethy, under the graceful arches 
of the Ponce de Leon, opened her letters, one 
after another, with that complete calm which 
is the product of an easy conscience, an as- 
sured position, and the knowledge that the 
most elaborate has held no terrors in 

the past, and is not likely to do so even in 
the future. 

“It’s very singular that Ruth does not 
write more frequently,” she said to Aber- 
nethy, “ and more fully.” 

Abernethy glanced up from his paper, 
growled pleasantly, and went on with his 
reading. 

“ Good gracious !” said Mrs. Abernethy, 
suddenly. 

Like an experienced husband, xA^bernethy 
had come to read with readiness that strange 
code of signals known to man and wife — that 
private system of matrimonial communica- 
tion, swift as telegraphy, secret as a cipher 
— and he looked up quickly as he caught the 
rising inflection in his wife’s voice. 

“ Hear what Mrs. Everingham writes to 
me,” continued Mrs. Abernethy, excitedly. 


THE DRAGONESS 


263 




“You know I asked her to look out a little 
for what was going on. And now just listen 
to what she says : ‘ My dear Sarah,’ ” she 
read, “ ‘ you remember with what reluctance 
I always speak of all that concerns others, 
but your parting injunctions and the interest 
I take in you and yours, in a manner, will ac- 
count for what I am about to say. We, of 
course, agree perfectly in our ideas as to cer- 
tain demoralizing conditions that have lately 
displayed themselves in Andros, and as to 
those who are chiefly responsible for their 
existence. I know what you think and feel 
in regard to certain matters, and I am sure 
you will fully endorse my opinion as to a 
number of facts that have come to my no- 
tice. I hesitate to write it, but Miss Kit- 
tridge, I fear, is not a proper person to be in- 
trusted with the guidance of two girls in the 
society of Andros. I need only mention to 
you the fact that she is seen almost daily in 
the park with Mrs. “Tom” — how I hate 
these odious and undignified appellations 
that have now become only too common ! — 
and that Harold Redmond is a constant vis- 
itor at the house. We all know how unhap- 
py Mrs. “Tom ” has made her poor mother 


264 


“THE DRAGONESS 


9> 


— our school-girl friend — and we must accept 
her for that mother’s sake; but Harold Red- 
mond, though entitled by family and fortune 
to the highest consideration, has forfeited by 
his heedlessness the consideration of all self- 
respecting people. The latter part of the 
season has been very gay, and the girls and 
the “ dragoness,” as she is commonly known 
here, have been everywhere. Sigourney 
Pales is most attentive to her, and* rumor 
says that they will soon become engaged, if, 
indeed, they are not engaged already. Re- 
port is also equally busy with the names of 
your niece and Harold Redmond. If you 
do not wish to see — ’ ” Mrs. Abernethy 
paused. “We must start for the North at 
once,” she said, sternly. 

Vl‘ 

How it came about no one ever exactly 
knew; the matter was as much wrapped up 
in mystery as the whole of this strange af- 
fair. , But before the autumn Ruth’s en- 
gagement to Harold Redmond was formally 
announced. That “ love conquers all things ” 
is an adage that, although not entitled to 


THE DRAGONESS” 


265 


rank perhaps with the brand-new truths of 
scientific investigation, may still find some 
advocates and adherents. Many have be- 
lieved that it was the steady persistence of 
love that finally conquered Mrs. Abernethy. 
It is certain that if it was so, it was no mean 
victory. 

After a brief betrothal, the wedding took 
place. And one morning in late autumn, 
when the yellow leaves brushed lightly 
across the carpet on which the two walked 
from the church door — beneath a shower of 
rice and blessings, Ruth and Harold Red- 
mond went out into life together man and 
wife. 

“ I owe it all to you,” wrote Ruth to the 
“ dragoness ” from Algiers, whither the wed- 
ding trip had taken her. “If you had not 
come, we would not have seen each other so 

constantly and loved each other so much 

It was very cruel and very kind of you to 
send that great dragon with the jewelled 
eyes for my wedding present. Gorgeous as 
it is, and magnificent as it will look in the 
centre of the table on state occasions, you 
must know that I want to forget that even 


266 


“THE DRAGONESS” 


for a moment I ever thought of you other 
than as I do now — the dearest, kindest, 
wisest being in all the world. . . . There is no 
one in the universe like Harold, I am sure, 
and I know that I do not deserve such bliss 
as this. I am afraid that I have been very 
vain and thoughtless and selfish. I must 
get you to help me to improve myself — to 
help me not to waste my life as I have in 
the past. ... You must marry Sigourney 
Pales. He loves you passionately, and I 
know that you like him very much. I am 
sure that is what it must come to at last. 
Nothing could possibly be nicer, and I am 
sure you would be very, very happy.” . . . 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 




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IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


“ I want a hero : an uncommon want, 

When every year and month sends forth a new one.” 


M ISS ROSMARY sat gazing at the 
new Jean Frangois Millet. Her aunt, 
who, as all the world knows, is the sole rela- 
tive of the heiress and reigning beauty, had 
bought the celebrated picture at the last sale, 
and only within a day or two had it been sent 
home and hung in the gallery of the great 
house, that grim pile stretching so many 
precious feet along the Avenue, which the 
famous Mr. Rosmary had left to his only 
child. 

Miss Rosmary’s thoughts ran in mingled 
revery. She was at half-angry, half-conten- 
tious odds with the world just now, and it 
was not strange to her that the unfortunate 
painter had been left to creep through a sad 
life to a dismal grave. But, after all, would 
he have been happier in another existence? 


270 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


Even if his peasants — those sad, powerful, 
poetic creatures — should step from their 
frames into the ducal palaces and the man- 
sions of millionaires that now gave so many 
of them harborage, would they not find all 
about them trivial, unsatisfactory, provok- 
ing? The existences of those about them 
might bring wonder to the brain and a 
shadow of fear to the hearts of such simple- 
fibred, little -gifted, meagre -lived folk as 
the broad-natured villager of Barbizon had 
painted ; still, would such lives not appear 
to them contemptible? And then Miss Ros- 
mary tapped a petulant foot upon the pol- 
ished floor. But Miss Rosmary — and she 
quite understood herself — was not by any 
means dissatisfied with this sublunary globe. 
Nor was humanity as a whole, or in im- 
agined instances, at all out of the way to 
her. The trouble was with the world which 
is implied when the word is used in a re- 
stricted sense — the world which is, after all, 
the true world to each of us ; the universe 
of our daily round, of our friends and of our 
enemies, of our loves and of our hates, of 
our hopes and of our fears, of our deeds 
and of our misdeeds. Her life, it seemed to 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


271 


• her, was vapid, void, although to all others 
it appeared to be as full and as finely ac- 
cented an existence as was possible to a 
young woman in the very flush of the rest- 
less, feverish society of this our America 
towards the last of the hurrying years of 
this rapid -footed century — a society she 
thought shallow, imitative, wholly unorig- 
inal; forgetting that the ingenious ages that 
have accomplished so much have only been 
able to discover a very few ways in which 
people may amuse themselves. But Miss 
Rosmary scarcely ran into such an analysis 
as she sat and looked at the picture so filled 
with the pathos of patient, common exist- 
ence. Perhaps it had an unperceived appeal 
to her, for the foot committed a little stamp 
— it might be self-condemnatory, it might be 
self-assertive — and then Miss Rosmary arose 
and walked across the room. She paused be- 
fore a Meissonier. What truth of drawing, 
what real breadth, what spirit, in the few 
square inches of the picture ! What a gentle- 
man of the gallant time! How quick would 
have been his foot along the gay paths of 
adventure, how ready the sword at his side 
if the zest of hazard led to the point of 


272 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


danger! Both pictures added to her dis- 
content with all about her ; with the real 
sameness of the things to which her most 
modern and modish life confined her ; with 
the sameness of the people who in the con- 
tentment of their unmeaningness perplexed 
her. Was there nothing but capricious punc- 
tilio and artificial ritual ; was there not some- 
thing down in the press of the common 
world where the dust half hid the con- 
flict ; might not lives be found there, strong, 
inspiring, effectual lives, that would justify 
creation? And in the shadowy and tenu- 
ous haze of her dissatisfaction there was a 
well-defined nucleus of denser discontent 
— discontent with things happening in al- 
most regular recurrence to herself. Wom- 
ankind, of course, did not please her — 
she had only one friend who perfectly 
understood her and whom she perfectly 
understood — but mankind, masculine man- 
kind ! 

An aggressively, negatively unobjection- 
able young man, without a merit or a pros- 
pect, had offered her his very gentlemanly- 
looking hand and something he called his 
heart at about two that morning. Really 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


273 


the thing was getting to be of too frequent 
occurrence. There were so many of them, 
so much alike, with their pale faces, their 
trained accents, their consummate dress, 
their routine lives, their routine topics — 
their clubs, their races, their hunting, and 
themselves. Of course she detected slight 
differences in them — there are differences 
in the dress-coated, white-waistcoated, full- 
dressed swallows that sit along the telegraph 
wire, ignorant of the tidings of the world 
flowing at their feet — for they did not all 
talk to her about the same things, although 
they did in much the same manner and in 
much the same tone. Here, one favored her 
with languid, pessimistic doubts ; there, one 
* drawled complacent negations, as if such 
things as establishing a race in unhappiness 
or depopulating the heavens were easily 
within the day’s work of either. Some 
were ill of many things ; they had caught 
aesthetic ailments of which they never would 
be cured unless beauty were out of fashion ; 
they suffered from complicated sentimental 
afflictions from which their recovery was 
only too certain. And there were those who 
employed language in accounts of exploits 


274 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


across the fences of neighboring counties ; 
and the annotators of the gossip of the 
day — these perhaps the best worth hear- 
ing after all, she sometimes thought, for 
they were always so much more simple and 
natural. 

She knew that in most girls there is some- 
thing left over from childhood that leads 
them to take delight in terrifying them- 
selves, in imagination, with the exact-coated 
entities they see so often and of whom 
they know so little, as in younger years 
they took delight in frightening themselves 
with the terrors of a jack-in-the-box. They 
like to feel the same thrill when, with un- 
perceived glance, they see these wonderful 
beings gazing from out mysterious inacces- 
sibility through a club window, that they 
experienced when, taken to some circus, 
they saw the animals in their cages. But in 
the lives of such as those who surrounded 
her. Miss Rosmary found no more to excite 
her imagination than she might in the course 
of a letter sent through the post-office. 
What chance was there, then, for such as 
he who had so kindly taken his negative in 
the De Jones’s conservatory at 2 A. M.? 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


275 


Does any one suppose that a girl falls in 
love with a mere man ? There is no such 
real difference between two fairly present- 
able masculine creatures as there is between 
either of them and the being a young girl's 
imagination makes of one and not of the 
other, if it is in the one to arouse imagina- 
tion and give it wing. 

Miss Rosmary had lost or mislaid not a 
little of her temper as she was driven home 
the night before. The wheels ground heavily 
on the pavement ; all but one or two of the 
over-worked echoes of the Avenue had taken 
themselves off to their tenement houses; just 
past her aunt, half asleep and leaning her 
head against the side of the carriage, she 
caught glimpses of the grouped and scat- 
tered stars in unobstructed space. Was not 
the world wider than the precincts of a 
billet-doux”? Were there not men some- 
where — men who were strong to do things, 
and did them ; men whose failures even 
would awaken interest ; men whose suc- 
cesses would excite exultant pride? How 
without such as these would the world have 
advanced so far; how would great discov- 
eries have been made, and great fortunes; 


276 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 

how brave deeds done and great books 
written ? Had she seen any in the last 
hours, any in that atmosphere heavy with 
the odors of flowers, astir in flow and pulsa- 
tion, as music swelled or softened, murmur- 
ous and eddying in the undertones and 
ripples of talk and laughter — had she seen 
any who would take the enlisting shilling 
from Effort, Fame’s sergeant and orderly? 

And then she laughed at herself. 

Of what was she thinking? Her thoughts 
ran back to a being of younger fancy, of 
more unformed dream — a Ruy-Blas-Hernani 
sort of creature, daring, resolute, sometimes 
arbitrary, but always commanding, bearing 
down doubt with scant ceremony, wooing 
with humility shown only to herself, carry- 
ing her away almost forcefully if need be, 
but always with that best gentleness, the 
gentleness of the strong. And, after all, 
was her present hero less spectacular, less 
dramatic ? Or had the drama, its laws, its 
tone, only changed? Was she as absurd 
now as then? She was sure she was not. 
There was romance in the world since there 
were endurance, and effort, and the glad 
spirit of adventure ; and where there was 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


277 


romance there were men and women such 
as those of whom she dreamed, for — her 
argument ran in such circle — without such 
men and women there would be no romance. 

“ The morning’s mail, Miss Rosmary,” 
said a servant, entering. 

She took half a dozen letters from the man, 
hastily looked them over, selected two as 
worthy of earliest attention, and as she open- 
ed the first she hummed, almost sang, three 
lines from the song of the Blind Beggar “ in 
a silken cloak,” from the old ballad : 

“When first our king his fame did advance, 
And sought his title in delicate France, 

In many places great perils past he — ” 

and then she read : 

“ — Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. 

“ Dearest Millicent, — I know I am 
your only and your half - desperate friend. 
Yesterday was my birthday — twenty-two. 
But I think a girl’s life should be counted 
double ; I always think of summer as one 
year, and winter as another. Twenty-two ! 
I am forty-four if I am a day. No one here 
can give me satisfactory sympathy, as no 


278 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


one can understand my troubles. But you — 
you know me, and you know how much a 
very modern girl has against her in having 
so much for her. You recognize our eman- 
cipation ; you appreciate the embarrassment 
of our freedom — our freedom without guid- 
ing precedent. You know that we have 
thrust upon us new knowledge, new oppor- 
tunities ; that we must think, decide, act ; 
that as well as old duties *to others, we have 
new duties — to ourselves. You know all 
these things — none better than you — and 
you will understand me when I say that I 
am suffering from one of my not unusual at- 
tacks of acute conscientiousness, aggravated 
this time and with peculiar symptoms. 

“You have heard a good deal about me. 
I did not like your last letter because it did 
not tell me what ; and you know that I 
would tell you everything if there only could 
be eveiything to tell. And — well — very well 
— if you’ll let me do it in my own way. 

“You know my exacting nature. You 
know with what antagonism I stand against 
the world if it does not continually give me 
its superlatives, its quintessences ; and — they 
want me to marry a man who is not a par- 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


279 


tide of a paragon. I am living in what in 
our old Latin grammar — I never studied an 
English or a French one, and I am not sure 
if it is the same in those — I think was called 
the first person singular of the pluperfect 
subjunctive. ‘ I might, could, would, or 
should have loved.’ I might have loved had 
Providence seen fit to give me a humble 
spirit, a meek, unquestioning heart; I could 
have loved if I had ever met a master for 
my irreverent nature ; I would have loved 
undoubtedly in spite of all, if I had been — 
my own grandmother, if I had not been filled 
with imperative intellectual needs, with pos- 
itive artificial wants, trained to criticise, 
analyze, and dissect myself until I am incapa- 
ble of a natural, spontaneous, blundering, un- 
questioning impulse ; I should have loved, 
yes — I should indeed have loved, and no 
one knows it better than myself — I should 
have loved if I desired the usual happiness 
of a usual world. But I never have, and I 
fear I never shall. They want me to love, 
but what can I do if I can’t ? Change the 
man and try another? I have done this at 
times, and my failures have been pitiable. 
My future sits before me grinning like an 


28 o 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


old hag. I shall grow sharper, more cynical 
with the passing seasons, until I become the 
fright of the callow, and, with my unimpres- 
sionable, knowing old heart, the terror of the 
mature. But am I to blame? You and I 
know that I am ^not. 

“ It is a vast theme that I have just started 

— that I am not my own grandmother. I 
look at Copley’s picture of her in her youth 

— did I send you my last photograph ? 
There’s a contrast. She’s ahead of me in 
prettiness I fear ; but I think of her as I 
saw her in old age, and I know that I could 
give her, were she here, subjects, questions, 
suggestions, that would frighten her into 
wakefulness. I cannot be satisfied with the 
thirtgs that satisfied her. I may be vain of 
my invaluable sex, but it is plain to me 
that, in what we are, as in our requirements, 
we have advanced as far beyond our fore- 
mothers as our masculine complements have 
fallen behind their forefathers. Would to- 
day’s men fight for a principle? Some did 
twenty and more years ago ; but I dance 
with none such now. To lead a cotillon is 
their most desperate deed ; would they lead 
a forlorn hope, or even a hope not forlorn ? 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


28 


“ You know that it has for some time 
been the desire of my amiable family to see 
me safely married. They attempt conceal- 
ment with such extraordinary care that I 
know precisely what they try to hide, and I 
resent their uncomplimentary fear that my 
money exposes me to many grievous dan- 
gers — dangers such as they evidently do not 
apprehend from my charms. Every model, 
every fairly eligible man — and they are not 
particular about years — ^has been paraded 
before my undazzled eyes. Until lately 
such attacks upon my peace of heart have 
been desultory, unsystematic ; but for the 
last few months the family efforts have been 
constant, concentrated, thoroughly purpose- 
ful. One individual has been chosen out 
of all the world to make me supremely 
happy, and he, fortunate or unfortunate, is 
on all occasions, natural or forced, thrust 
into my society and bepraised beyond all 
patience. Of course you think that I must 
detest him. But I do not; I almost a little 
more than endure him. Our respective and 
respected families have long been intimate 
— indeed, in colonial times I think there 
was some intermarriage and that he is a 


282 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


kind of far-away cousin of mine — but I 
really have known but little of him. He was 
abroad with his father during the three years 
before he entered Harvard, and then for four 
years I was away myself. He returned only 
a few months ago from a trip around the 
world in his yacht. He is perfectly typical 
and perfectly commonplace. He leads a 
life of half-busy, half-idle leisure ; he drives 
one of the most accurately equipped coaches 
in the country ; he has one of the finest old 
homes in the city and one of the finest new 
houses in Newport ; his name hangs prom- 
inent upon a main branch of that stififly 
drawn production, a colonial genealogical 
tree ; he is a perfect multitude of such 
merits; but to me he possesses only one — 
that he does not seem to care to please me, 
for the traits of the man of my vision are 
neither nautical, equine, vehicular, architect- 
ural, nor historical. 

“ And this is the man that they want me 
to marry. Through life you and I have 
been fed, so to speak, on the whitest, closest- 
winnowed wheat ; we have read the best 
books ; we have heard the best music ; we 
have seen the best pictures; no great statue 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 283 

gives the world the charm subtler than all 
color, the charm of pure line and complete 
form, that we have not seen ; that polished 
conglomerate which you think you so detest, 
the curiously grained and veined thing they 
call society, we have known at its best the 
world over ; all that we have gained or 
garnered has been attempered by a faith the 
key-note of which is vicarious suffering, the 
agony of divine sacrifice. These, all these, 
are the fruits of effort. And is a woman, a 
woman to whom a shock to taste is severer 
than physical pain, to fall in love, to be 
dragged into love of something masculine 
without a hand’s motion towards worthy 
attainment — of an idler who does not earn 
his place so well as we do ours? I will 
have no bankrupt to existence, no man who 
does not pay the world his debt. I — please 
do not laugh — I remember that last autumn 
at Lenox you told me that I dreamed of a 
marvel — a combination of Count d’Orsay, 
Shelley, and James Nasmyth. Perhaps, but 
I see what I see, 

“ It will all come to nothing. He does 
not really care for me ; I, not at all for him 
— not enough even to care that he does not 


284 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


care for me. I would tell you, of course, if 
there were danger — or hope — or anything, 
but there is not, nor will there ever be. • 

“ I could write a great deal about two or 
three new actual engagements here, but I 
believe you want to hear what I want you 
to hear — about myself from myself. I have 
told you but little, after all ; really nothing 
you did not know or suspect. It will be a 
long time, Millicent, I fear — we are pottery 
or such inductile and tenacious clay — before 
either of us has more to tell the other. 

“ Incessantly yours, 

“Janet. 

“ P. S. — I forgot to say I refused him two 
weeks ago.” 

Miss Rosmary did not lay the letter down ; 
she sat with eyes upon it as she held it in 
uplifted hand. 

Miss Rosmary, who had never seen him, 
could see as plainly as if he were visibly 
before her the man to whom they wished 
to marry her friend. She thought that she 
knew the kind perfectly — a useless creature, 
solicitous about his dress, but ignorant of a 
manner ; whose groom broke his horses for 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 285 

him ; who would not have dared sail his 
own yacht ; who was indifferent as to what 
the world thought of his brains, but was 
proud of the fame of his millions ; who 
would rather be a guest at Sandringham 
than master of the White House. What 
could such a man as this Gerald Massie — 
the gossips had given her the name — do ? 
And what could the others like him, that 
she knew so well, do that would be worth 
the doing? She did not demand much; 
she was very reasonable, she assured herself. 
She only asked that a man should be 
strong, forceful; that he should have done 
something, or proved to her his capability 
for doing something, to awaken her respect 
or excite her sympathy. But among those 
she knew or was likely to know ! 

Miss Rosmary opened her second letter in 
quick impatience. 

“ Electra, Montana. 

“My dear Millicent, — Of course you 
are surprised to receive a letter from me 
written from this place ; but here I am, and 
here I shall be detained for several days. I 
am here, and — don’t skip — you will learn 
why in the climax of my letter. 


286 - 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


“Several things not common to a club man 
— a tame man of the city’s wilderness — have 
happened to me since I saw you last ; things 
I can tell you worth the telling, and which 
could best be told in the twilight of some 
lingering dinner dying in its glory, but which 
I will nevertheless attempt to tell you now, 
so anxious am I that you should know them, 
and so sure am I that they will interest you. 
If I were a wise man I would not do it, for I 
shall only be giving you an opportunity to say 
‘ I told you so but when I am enthusiastic 
I am never wise, and I am enthusiastic now. 

“ I suppose that they have been selling 
violets for a long time on the corners of 
Fifth Avenue, and that even the watering- 
carts are out. They are having out here 
Avhat they call spring; it is to me rather 
the disturbed end of a vicious winter dying 
slowly, and like a stage villain torn into 
agonies by an aroused conscience. It has 
been cold; great storms have been frequent; 
the earth has been deluged, and every stream 
is swollen. 

“ I know that you never read the news- 
papers, unless it is to see that you have been 
at a place where you never thought of going, 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


.287 


or were engaged to a man who had never 
been presented to you ; but even if you did 
read them, so insignificant a fact as what 
happened to an express train in the far 
Northwest carrying a hundred and thirty- 
nine passengers — among whom was the 
amiable and fairly appreciated writer of 
these lines — would make but small show in 
the crush and condensation of the Associ- 
ated Press despatches, and would not be 
likely to attract your attention. 

“ The railroad from Electra to Cartonsville 
runs through great, almost uninhabited bar- 
rens, and at Black’s Ford crosses the river. 
It is a wild, desolate country all around ; 
some convulsion of nature has torn out the 
channel in which the stream runs between 
high, broken, and rocky banks. Day before 
yesterday the inhabitants of Black’s Ford, 
fifty in number perhaps, noticed that the 
water was rising rapidly. My informant, an 
engineer’s rod-man, left there to see that 
the bridge is kept clear and the signal light 
at the end properly shown — my informant, 
whose account of what was said I follow 
quite closely, tells me that nothing like it 
had ever been known there before. 


288 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


“ The gray clouds broke raggedly at sun- 
set, a fierce, yellow light blazing through 
every rift ; the wind rose, and so prevailed 
that men with difficulty kept their feet ; 
children were caught up by any one near 
and carried home. When the night shut 
down but few were gathered at the small 
‘store,’ the only place of the kind at Black’s 
Ford — my informant among the rest. All 
except one belonged to the settlement — a 
stranger, a young man who had been driven 
over from a neighboring ranch, and who 
evidently awaited the arrival of a train. He 
said nothing ; and though curious eyes were 
turned on him, even the garrulous store- 
keeper forbore putting him to the question. 

“ It was not wholly dark outside ; there 
was no moon, but the stars shone brightly, 
and it seemed not far away, between the 
driven, goaded clouds. The wind gathered 
even more strength ; space seemed filled 
with its sound. It roared between the river 
banks ; it shuddered through the framework 
of the bridge ; at the corners of the build- 
ings strips seemed torn from it upon their 
edges. Its shrill whistle was like the sound 
of ripping silk; along the barren uplands 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 289 

ran noises as of knives whetted upon unwet 
stone. 

“ The door of the store was thrown sud- 
denly open and a man shouted : 

“ ^ Come out here, all of you ! We’re 
afraid the bridge will go.’ 

Even as he stood in the doorway his 
voice could hardly be heard above the up- 
roar outside. 

“ All sprang to their feet ; the greater 
number hastened to the not distant river- 
bank. The black outlines of the great 
bridge stood, here, clearly defined against 
the sky; there, lost against the massed, 
hurrying clouds. 

“ ‘ She’ll go,’ said one, ^ sure.’ 

^ She must, ’ assented another. ‘ She 
can’t stand it long.’ 

‘ See, see !’ cried a third, ^ how the wa- 
ter climbs up the ’butments.’ 

^‘As the mantle of the Tishbite divided 
the waters, so the sheeted wind seemed to 
drive before it flood upon flood. 

Suddenly the storekeeper spoke. 

“‘When’s that train due?’ he shouted. 

“ ‘ In an fiour,’ was the answer from all 
sides. 


290 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


“ ‘ If it don’t hold up for that time the 
train’s gone,’ said the storekeeper, solemnly. 

“Almost as he spoke, with such tremor as 
may come before dissolution, with groan- 
ing outcry, with the sharp crack of iron 
torn apart, with gathering roar, the massive 
structure bent, broke, and fell with slow, 
final crash into the raging river. From the 
abutments hung iron rods torn from their 
fastenings, twisted, contorted, threatening as 
vipers knit around some fateful head. 

“ ‘ The train’s lost !’ said some one above 
the low murmur that was almost a wail. 

“ None dissented ; none spoke. The river 
seemed roaring, growling for its prey ; the 
rocks on the bank were thrust out like fangs 
through the foam. 

“ ^ Is there no way to give warning?’ 
asked the stranger, speaking for the first 
time. 

How’d you do it?’ demanded the store- 
keeper, in the tension of the moment turning 
angrily upon him^ 

“ ‘ Is there no other way of getting 
across ?’ asked the other, quietly. 

“ ‘ None.’ 

“ ‘ No signal to be given ?’ 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


291 


“ ‘ No,’ said the station-master. ‘ They’ll 
drive right into the river unless there’s a 
light shown half a mile up the track.’ 

‘ Who’s to do it ?’ asked the stranger. 

“ ‘ It can’t be done.’ 

“ ‘ Can’t we swim the river?’ 

“The station-master glanced down the 
bank and laughed in half-derision. 

“ ‘ Do you think any man could get 
through that?’ he asked, sneeringly. 

“ ‘ A man might try.’ 

“ ‘ Who ?’ 

“ ‘ I, for one,’ answered the stranger. 

“ ‘ It’s death,’ said some one. 

Bring me that light yonder,’ continued 
the stranger in a quick, commanding tone, 
‘ and hang another in its place.’ 

“ No one stirred. 

“‘Do you hear me?’ he shouted, as he 
threw off his coat. ‘ Bring me that light.’ 

“ After hesitating a moment, suspicious of 
being sent on a fool’s errand, so little likely 
did it seem that any one would have such 
hardihood, one of the men ran towards the 
post where shone a small lamp with a red 
light. 

“ The stranger tightened the belt about 


292 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 

his waist, walked to the water’s edge, and 
stood waiting for the lamp. 

“ ‘ Give me matches,’ he said. 

“ Some were handed to him. 

“ ‘ And an oil-skin coat.’ 

“ Several were offered ; he grasped the 
nearest, and with quick, strong hand cut 
from it two pieces. He wrapped one hastily 
around the matches and thrust the parcel 
into the bosom of his shirt ; the other he 
wound around the lamp after blowing out 
the light. 

“He stood for an instant gazing at the 
stream ; then suddenly he cast off his shoes, 
stepped into the river, struck out, and in a 
moment was lost to sight in the darkness. 

“‘By — !’ but the storekeeper suppressed 
his oath — ‘when souls are saved he’ll be sure 
of his salvation, I don’t care what else he’s 
done- or hasn’t.’ 

“ As if the unuttered but understood oath 
gave solemnity to w^hat was said, one of the 
men, in low, determined voice, cried ‘Amen.’ ” 

Miss Rosmary’s hand caught the letter 
tighter; her eyes shone with excited light. 
In a moment she read on: 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


293 


As a crowd lining a race-track when the 
horses sweep to the winning post, so all 
stood rigid and silent along the shore, with 
craning necks and eager eyes ; stood and 
saw nothing, heard nothing but the wind 
and the rushing water ; stood so lost in 
strained attention that time was really the 
nothing that it is. 

“ ‘ He’s stopped her or we’d have seen her 
head-light before this,’ said one. 

“‘She’s often late,’ answered another. 

“ None disputed this. 

“ ‘ Perhaps we couldn’t see her lights over 
here this weather,’ said the first as the rain 
began to fall in torrents. 

“ ‘ I tell you we could,’ said the store- 
keeper. ‘ A man’s a fool who’d think he 
couldn’t.’ 

“None spoke; all knew that the angry 
tone of the last speaker was a protest against 
losing hope. They all stood now grouped 
together, grouped as are frightened cattle. 
But they were gathered in more than fear; 
they stood in awe, in silence, as men stand 
around a closing grave. 

“ Our train came to a stop with a sud* 


294 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


denness that brought every passenger to his 
feet. I looked hastily out of the window. 
The darkness was piled against the pane 
like black marble in a quarry ; the wind 
shrieked around the train as a maniac might, 
finding some strange obstruction in the path 
of his escape. I hastened forward with the 
others. I leaned from the platform of the 
first car and looked and listened. Just 
in front of the train I could see moving 
lights. 

‘‘ ‘ He has fainted,’ were the first words I 
made out. 

“ ‘ What has happened ?’ I asked the con- 
ductor, who had been forward, as he came 
rapidly along. 

‘ The bridge below’s been carried away, 
and if that young man hadn’t come from 
God knows where with his light, we’d all 
have been in the river with the train on top 
of us. Is any one of you a doctor?’ 

“You know about my year or two at 
Bellevue ; perhaps I could aid, and I has- 
tened down the track. They had lifted him 
off the rails, and lamps were held over him 
as he lay. His eyes were closed ; he was 
senseless, but his jaws were set in relentless 


IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 


295 


resolve. We carried him to the forward 
car. The train was backed seven miles to 
this place, and here I am. 

‘‘ The young man is still too weak to 
give any account of himself. I am acting 
as his nurse, and am writing in the room 
next to the one in which he lies. I cer- 
tainly shall not leave my patient for a day 
or two. 

“ And now you will remember what you 
have always said ; you will remember our 
many contentions ; remember your repeated 
assertions that one must go far to find a 
man among men — that among none whom 
you saw could a man be found : and you 
will remember too with what serene con- 
fidence I have repeated to you that the 
Great Duke said, ‘ The dandies fought well 
at Waterloo.’ 

“ I will let you know immediately what I 
am going to do when I have finally decided. 
I do not like to leave this young man. He 
has done a fine thing and I am going to 
see him through. I am old enough to know 
better, but I don’t. 

“ Sincerely your friend and guardian, 
“James Gilchrist.” 


296 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 

Miss Rosmary dropped the letter and sat 
silent. She looked about her. What pre- 
tences the pictures were — what mere pre- 
tences ! and tl\je world in which she lived ! 
Miss Rosmary started to her feet with 
flushed cheeks. Why could she not know 
men like this ? Poor fellow, she thought, 
if she could only see him ; could even help 
to care for him. How stupidly the letter 
was written ! Nothing at all — 

“ A telegram. Miss Rosmary,” said the 
servant, entering hastily. 

Miss Rosmary tore open the yellow en- 
velope. The despatch was from Chicago, 
and ran : 

“ Of course you have received my letter 
written at Electra. Our rescuer turns out 
to be Gerald Massie of Boston, visiting a 
friend’s ranch. He is entirely recovered, 
and comes with me. I have taken the lib- 
erty of asking him up the river, where I 
suppose your aunt and yourself soon go. 
Wonderful, is it not ? 

“James Gilchrist*” 


THE END. 


,1 



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